Abstract
This paper investigates methods of effective use of gadolinium-bearing rods as burnable poisons in AP-1000 fuel assembly. To do this, a sensitivity analysis was performed on the effect of using the enriched Gd2O3 and various concentrations of Gd2O3 fuel pins. Different neutronic parameters of AP-1000 FA (that is widely used in pressurized water reactors) such as Kinf, peak pin power, reactivity swing, and the residual binding at different burnups are analyzed. The main goal of this investigation is to effectively use burnable poisons to maintain the reactivity swing as low as possible to decrease the frequent moving of the control rods. DRAGON code is used to develop subassembly designs. The cases with enriched Gd157 have burned out near 11 GWd/MTU and for Gd155 cases, it was near 17 GWd/MTU. The reactivity change of cases with enriched Gd155 is smoother than the cases with enriched Gd157. Our reactor physics study arrives at the flattest reactivity curve and the highest burnout time with the highest value of Gd155 enrichment (100 w/o). This design gives the lowest reactivity swing as well as a better pin power peaking factor. The new suggested design of enriched gadolinia bearing rods performed excellently in less reactivity swing, power peaking factor, and reactivity binding.
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