Analysis of burn up effects on kinetic parameters in an Accelerator Driven Subcritical TRIGA reactor

In this paper, the kinetic parameters at the end of cycle for 20 days operation at 1 MW reactor power have been calculated using MCNPX code for source multiplication factors (Ks) of critical and 0.97 levels. Accelerator Driven Subcritical TRIGA reactor has been considered as the case study of the problem. The system sub-criticality levels, the required accelerator current (Ip) and power (Pacc) have been calculated for each burn up step. According to the results, the required Ip and Pacc increased as system sub-criticality level decreased. Also, the results show that the effective delayed neutron fraction (βeff) does not depend on sub-criticality levels significantly but the neutron reproduction time (Λ) strongly depends on the number of fuel elements in the core and sub-criticality levels. In addition, it was observed that in comparison with the beginning-of-cycle values, at end-of-cycle, the Λ increases by 112.6% and 108.4% respectively but the βeff decreases by 6.1% and 1.8% respectively in critical and 0.97 levels.