Abstract
A megawatt-class, gas-cooled fast reactor was designed to provide 2.2MWth power for space application. The reactor concept adopts 90% enriched annular UO2 rods as the fuel and He-Xe mixture as the coolant. The thermal power is converted into electric power through Brayton turbines. The neutron flux distributions of four selected reactor configurations with different control rod arrangement are calculated using Monte Carlo code. In addition, calculations with different combinations of inserted control rods are conducted to investigate their effects on the power profile. Results show that control rods arranged in the central region help reduce the neutron flux peak and the radial flux peaking factor. The outer control rods, however, show limited effects on the central power profile. Instead, they only affect the region of the control rod neighborhood. Besides, since the outer control rods will increase the radial peaking factor, they are better to be used as safety rods for emergency. Based on the calculation and analysis, three control strategy candidates are proposed considering power profile flattening and control flexibility.
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