Mohd Syukri Yahya

Burnable absorber-integrated Guide Thimble (BigT) – I: design concepts and neutronic characterization on the fuel assembly benchmarks

This paper presents the conceptual designs of a new burnable absorber (BA) for the pressurized water reactor (PWR), which is named ‘Burnable absorber-integrated Guide Thimble’ (BigT). The BigT integrates BA materials into standard guide thimble in a PWR fuel assembly. Neutronic sensitivities and practical design considerations of the BigT concept are points of highlight in the first half of the paper. Specifically, the BigT concepts are characterized in view of its BA material and spatial self-shielding variations. In addition, the BigT replaceability requirement, bottom-end design specifications and thermal–hydraulic considerations are also deliberated. Meanwhile, much of the second half of the paper is devoted to demonstrate practical viability of the BigT absorbers via comparative evaluations against the conventional BA technologies in representative 17×17 and 16×16 fuel assembly lattices. For the 17×17 lattice evaluations, all three BigT variants are benchmarked against Westinghouses existing BA technologies, while in the 16×16 assembly analyses, the BigT designs are compared against traditional integral gadolinia-urania rod design. All analyses clearly show that the BigT absorbers perform as well as the commercial BA technologies in terms of reactivity and power peaking management. In addition, it has been shown that sufficiently high control rod worth can be obtained with the BigT absorbers in place. All neutronic simulations were completed using the Monte Carlo Serpent code with ENDF/B-VII.0 library.

Burnable absorber-integrated guide thimble (BigT) – II: application to 3D PWR core design

ABSTRACT This paper is a companion to its immediate predecessor in the “Burnable absorber-integrated Guide Thimble” (BigT) series. It aims to demonstrate potential applications of the BigT concepts in a three-dimensional (3D) commercial pressurized water reactor core, which is based on the AP1000 first core design. The study specifically compares neutronic characteristics of the reference core against a BigT-loaded design. In this study, reactivity depletion patterns of nine fuel assembly lattices in the reference core were first evaluated. Corresponding sets of BigT-loaded assemblies that yield neutronically similar characteristics (i.e., initial reactivity suppression and depletion trend) with those of the reference assembly lattices were determined next. These BigT-loaded fuel assemblies were later loaded in place of the reference fuel assemblies for the subsequent high-fidelity 3D Monte Carlo core simulations. Results of the study clearly demonstrate that the BigT-loaded AP1000 first core performs as well as the reference core since all neutronic parameters are comparable, especially in terms of reactivity depletion, power peaking factors and shutdown margin. All simulations were completed using the Monte Carlo Serpent code with ENDF/B-VII.0 library.