Neutronic analysis of a fuel element with variations in fuel enrichment and burnable poison

• Autor(a) principal: Rochkhudson Batista de Faria
• Data de Publicação: 2019
• Outros Autores: Felipe Martins Gomes Pereira, Carlos Eduardo Velasquez Cabrera, Fabiano Cardoso da Silva, Angela Fortini Macedo Ferreira, Claubia Pereira Bezerra Lima
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Institucional da UFMG
• Texto Completo: https://doi.org/10.15392/bjrs.v7i2B.769; http://hdl.handle.net/1843/57082; https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0264-9148; https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2960-3150; https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5999-9961
• topic: Neutronic analysis; Fuel element; Burnable poison; Reatores de água pressurizada; Veneno; Tecnologia nuclear; Criticalidade (Engenharia nuclear)

In this work, the goal was to evaluate the neutronic behavior during the fuel burnup changing the amount of burnable poison and fuel enrichment. The analyses used a 17 x 17 PWR fuel element, simulated using the 238 groups library cross-section collapsed from ENDF/BVII.0 and TRITON module of SCALE 6.0 code system. The results confirmed the effective action of the burnable poison in the criticality control, especially at Beginning Of Cycle (BOC) and in the burnup kinetics, because at the end of the fuel cycle there was a minimal residual amount of neutron absorbers (155Gd and 157Gd), as expected, showing the burnup of the Gd in the simulation methodology adopted. Furthermore, the results show that increasing the Gd insertion percentage does not change its final residual amount. At the end of the cycle, the fuel element was still critical for all the simulated situations, which indicates the possibility of extending the fuel burnup.