Effect of Pin and Subassembly Heterogenity in Sodium Void Worth Calculations

Abstract

Metal fuelled sodium cooled fast reactors are known to have high breeding ratio and short doubling time. Due to these features they play a very important role in the energy scenario, where higher power growth is required. Large sodium cooled fast reactors have positive sodium void coefficient, which is considered to be undesirable feature even though reactor safety can be established for all design based accidents like loss of flow and transient over power accidents. These types of fast reactors, which have harder neutron spectra are having higher sodium void coefficient compared to ceramic fuelled fast reactors. In many of the safety analysis the total sodium void is calculated and it is used in the safely evaluation. However the sodium in the metal fuelled reactor has got three parts, namely bonding sodium, coolant sodium and the sodium in the inter space of subassembly hexagonal cans. In the reactor accident scenario the behavior of these three components of sodium will be different and will effect the sequence of the accident. The finer details, of the fuel sub assembly, are modeled in to Monte Carlo code and the sodium void coefficient is calculated for each of the component for the fuel zones. This study will be helpful in improving safety of the reactor and also reducing the conservatism in the safely features.