Comparison of neutronic aspects in high‐temperature gas‐cooled reactor using ZrC and SiC Triso particle with 50 and 100 MWt power

Abstract

The use of zirconium carbide (ZrC) as a substitute for silicon carbide (SiC) has been proposed to improve the performance of coated particles for high-temperature gas-cooled reactor (HTGR) fuel. Irradiation test on ZrC has proved that it has excellent characteristics for HTGR fuel compared with SiC, such as fission product retention capabilities and better resistance on fission product corrosion. Neutronic analysis on 30 MWt HTGR using ZrC and SiC has been performed in many previous studies. The research presented in this paper was conducted as a further continuation of the aforementioned studies. The present study was directed to analyze tristructural isotropic (TRISO)-coated particles with ZrC as a substitute for the SiC layer on an HTGR with different power rates. Here, we used high-temperature test reactor design, an experimental scale prismatic HTGR built and operated in Japan. The power was varied at the range of 50-100 MWt, while the reactor geometry was modified by applying an additional fuel layer in the axial and radial directions. Neutronic analysis of the reactor was investigated by calculating the k-eff, k-inf, power peaking factor, burn-up level, neutron spectrum, and Doppler effect using ZrC and SiC layers for TRISO-coated fuel particles. The result shows the coated fuel particle using the ZrC layer has the same performance as SiC with an insignificant difference in the values on neutronic aspects calculation. Neutronic calculations are performed using the SRAC code with the Japanese Evaluated Nuclear Data Library 4.0 nuclear data library.