Development and verification of fuel burn-up calculation model in a reduced reactor geometry

A fuel burn-up model in a reduced reactor geometry (2-D) is successfully developed and implemented in the Batan in-core fuel management code, Batan-FUEL. Considering the bank mode operation of the control rods, several interpolation functions are investigated which best approximate the 3-D fuel assembly radial power distributions across the core as function of insertion depth of the control rods. Concerning the applicability of the interpolation functions, it can be concluded that the optimal coefficients of the interpolation functions are not very sensitive to the core configuration and core or fuel composition in RSG GAS (MPR-30) reactor. Consequently, once the optimal interpolation function and its coefficients are derived then they can be used for 2-D routine operational in-core fuel management without repeating the expensive 3-D neutron diffusion calculations. At the selected fuel elements (at H-9 and G-6 core grid positions), the discrepancy of the FECFs (fuel element channel power peaking factors) between the 2-D and 3-D models are within the range of 3.637 × 10−4, 3.241 × 10−4 and 7.556 × 10−4 for the oxide, silicide cores with 250 g 235U/FE and the silicide core with 300 g 235U/FE, respectively.