Study of criticality safety and neutronic parameters of UO2 fuel in MTR research reactors using the MCNP4C code

Abstract

The low enriched uranium UO2 fuel performance in MTR-22MW reactor is investigated in this paper with One Neutronic Trap (ONT) and Three Neutronic Traps (TNTs) to increase the scientific utilization of the reactor. The MCNP4C code was used to estimate the criticality safety and the neutronic parameters of the MTR-22MW before and after replacing the U3O8-Al original fuel by the UO2 one. The re-evaluated criticality safety parameters and the new neutronic characteristics of this reactor showed that the replacement of U3O8-Al Fuel Elements (FEs) by UO2 FEs would not significantly affect the neutronic characteristics of the MTR-22MW as well as its criticality for both the ONT and the TNTs. This result leads to say that the replacement of U3O8-Al FEs by UO2 FEs will not affect the safety of the reactor.