Safety behaviour of a material testing reactor using U3Si2 fuel during reactivity insertion accident
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Hala K.G. Selim
,
Afaf A.E. Ateya
and
Esmat H. Amin
Abstract
The performance of the nuclear reactor responding to any unexpected variation in reactivity is very important for reactor safety. Positive reactivity insertion causes power excursion and could have a destructive impact on the reactor core. Uranium silicide is considered to be well known accident tolerant fuel for the light water reactors due to their high metal density and high thermal conductivity. The aim of this study is to examine the thermal-hydraulic behavior of material testing reactor using U3Si2 fuel during reactivity insertion accident. The analysis is done for MTR-22 MW reactor with the U3O8 original fuel and the U3Si2 fuel using PARET; a neutronics-hydrodynamics-heat transfer code. The calculated parameters are the reactor power and the temperatures of clad and fuel as a function of time for the hot channel. The calculations show that a direct replacement of U3O8 by U3Si2 will not have effect on the reactor safety. The results show that in both cases the fuel integrity is maintained during the accident demonstrating the inherent safety features of the MTR reactor. Moreover, the maximum fuel temperature for U3Si2 during the accident is lower than that of U3O8 due to its higher thermal conductivity confirmed that it will perform better in severe accidents.
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Research ethics: This work is original and has not been published elsewhere.
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Informed consent: Not applicable.
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Author contributions: The authors have the all contribution in this research paper.
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Use of Large Language Models, AI and Machine Learning Tools: None declared.
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Conflict of interest: There are no conflicts of interest associated with this work.
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Research funding: None declared.
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Data availability: Data available on request.
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Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Serpent 2 simulations of the historic Haigerloch B8 nuclear reactor of 1945
- Safety behaviour of a material testing reactor using U3Si2 fuel during reactivity insertion accident
- Augmentation of the neutronic safety aspect of high-density fuel research reactor using new control element design
- Analysis of neutronic performance of VVER 1200 reactor using accident tolerant fuel
- Reliability assessment of equal height difference passive containment cooling system based on the adaptive metamodel-based subset importance sampling method in inverse uncertainty quantification framework
- Numerical investigation of three-tube intertwined HX design
- Prediction of LOCA break sizes using LSTM architecture for pressurized water reactors
- Decoupling and controller design of multivariable systems for small modular reactors
- Adsorption behavior of Se(Ⅳ) and Se(Ⅵ) on sodium bentonite
- Calendar of events
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Serpent 2 simulations of the historic Haigerloch B8 nuclear reactor of 1945
- Safety behaviour of a material testing reactor using U3Si2 fuel during reactivity insertion accident
- Augmentation of the neutronic safety aspect of high-density fuel research reactor using new control element design
- Analysis of neutronic performance of VVER 1200 reactor using accident tolerant fuel
- Reliability assessment of equal height difference passive containment cooling system based on the adaptive metamodel-based subset importance sampling method in inverse uncertainty quantification framework
- Numerical investigation of three-tube intertwined HX design
- Prediction of LOCA break sizes using LSTM architecture for pressurized water reactors
- Decoupling and controller design of multivariable systems for small modular reactors
- Adsorption behavior of Se(Ⅳ) and Se(Ⅵ) on sodium bentonite
- Calendar of events
