Burnup analysis and in-core fuel management study of the 3 MW TRIGA MARK II research reactor

The principal objective of this study is to formulate an effective optimal fuel management strategy for the TRIGA MARK II research reactor at AERE, Savar. The core management study has been performed by utilizing four basic types of information calculated for the reactor: criticality, power peaking, neutron flux and burnup calculation. This paper presents the results of the burnup calculations for TRIGA LEU fuel elements. The fuel element burnup for approximately 20 years of operation was calculated using the TRIGAP compute code. The calculation is performed in one-dimensional radial geometry in TRIGAP. Inter-comparison of TRIGAP results with other two calculations performed by MVP-BURN and MCNP4C-ORIGEN2.1 show very good agreement. Reshuffling at 20,000 MWh step provides the highest core lifetime of the reactor, which is 64,500 MWh. Besides, the study gives valuable insight into the behaviour of the reactor and will ensure better utilization and operation of the reactor in future.