Fast Reactors and Accelerator Driven Systems Knowledge Base
Conference Article: Reactivity calculations on molten-lead hybrid reactors
J.M.Martinez-Val, M.Perlado, E.Minguez, M.D.Cobo, A.Oda* E.T.S.l.lndustriales, Madrid Polytechnic University, Spain* Visiting researcher from Kyushu University, Japan
Abstract
Subcritical assemblies driven by external sources are potential candidates to exploit nuclear energy in an inherently safe way. At the same time, they can be used as incinerators of long-lived fission fragments and actinides. For subcritical assemblies to be economically competitive, neutron subcritical multiplication has to be as large as possible, which means a high Keff value. On the contrary, Keff has to be smaller than 1 by a margin large enough to absolutely avoid criticality. It is therefore very important to determine the reactivity effects due to any change in the geometry and/or composition of the subcritical assembly. In this paper, an analysis of reactivity calculations on molten-lead subcritical assemblies is presented. The main conclusion is that they can be designed in such a way that reactivity increments from any accidental change can not reach 0.04. This number is low enough to obtain a very high subcritical multiplication in nominal conditions, because the Keff can be about 0 .96 .
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key words: Fast Neutron Spectrum Systems, Nuclear Technology
- Reference:
- Technical Committee Meeting, Madrid, Spain 17-19 September 1997
- International Atomic Energy Agency, Vienna (Austria)
- IAEA-TC--903.3, pp:399-408
- International Atomic Energy Agency, Vienna (Austria)