Neutronic Investigation into Core Design Results

To examine its viability, a variety of parametric scans were performed using MCNP-5 [LANL, 2003] on a model of the proposed core. The core was designed with sufficient reactivity to ensure 10 years of full-power operation even when including such negative feedback coefficients as temperature, temperature based expansion, and bumup. The neutronics runs done include  

This section will cover some simple calculations related to the reactor. The reactor had a cold, beginning of life, neutron multiplication factor of 1.037 0.001, which corresponds to an excess positive reactivity of 5.7 based on a delayed neutron fraction of 0.0065. The burnup for the reactor was determined using a fairly simple set of equations. The consumption over 10 years at a power level of 200 kWth was 0.8 kgs of and at 400 kWth, 1.6 kgs of would be consumed. Given that the fuel loading is 186 kgs of the burnup is -0.86% for the upper end of the uranium consumed. This burnup results in a loss of 1 reactivity. 

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Neutronic Investigation into Core Design Results... 

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