Research of core characteristics of the Package-Reactor

A new small reactor concept called the Package-Reactor has been jointly developed by Hitachi, Ltd. and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd. The reactor technology was based on that of conventional LWRs. The reactor core consists of 12 cassettes containing fuel rods with a similar design to that of PWR fuel rods. Cassettes are placed in air at atmospheric pressure. Tube-type control clusters placed outside the pressure boundary are used as the core shutdown system. Natural circulation with two-phase flow is employed for the core cooling system and no re-circulation pumps are required. With these concepts the Package-Reactor eliminates any active components that operate in high pressure regions of the reactor and its capital costs can be reduced. The feasibility of reactivity control by using moderator void feedback and burnable poisons was studied to reduce operational and maintenance costs. It was found that a continuous operation of more than 5 years without any operations to control reactivity would be feasible with a UO2 fuel enrichment of 5.0 wt%, which is the upper limit for UO2 fuel enrichment under the current regulations in Japan. In addition, we researched the core reflectors' characteristics of the Package-Reactor.