Analysis of High Temperature Reactor Control Rod Worth for the Initial and Full Core

Abstract

Control rod is one important component in a nuclear reactor. In nuclear reactor operations the control rod functions to shut down the reactor. This research analyses ten control rods worth of HTR (High Temperature Reactor) at initial and full core. The HTR in this research adopts HTR-10 China and HTR- of pebble bed. Core calculations are performed by using MCNPX code after modelling the entire parts of core in condition of ten control rods fully withdrawn, all control rods in with 20 cm ranges of depth and the use of one control rod. Pebble bed and moderator balls are distributed in the core zone using a Body Centred Cubic (BCC) lattice by ratio of 57:43. The research results are obtained that the use of one control rod will decrease the reactor criticality of 2.04±0.12 %Δk/k at initial core and 1.57±0.10 %Δk/k at full core. The deeper control rods are in, the lesser criticality of reactor is with reactivity of ten control rods of 16.41±0.11 %Δk/k at initial core and 15.43±0.11 %Δk/k at full core. The results show that the use of ten control rods at full core will keep achieving subcritical condition even though the reactivity is smaller than reactivity at initial core.