Study of Criticality Safety and Neutronic Performance for a 348-Fuel-Pin Ghana Research Reactor-1 LEU Core Using MCNP Code
- 1 National Nuclear Research Institute, Ghana Atomic Energy Commission, Accra, Ghana
- 2 National Nuclear Research Institute, Ghana Atomic Energy Commission, Accra, Ghana
- 3 Centre for Energy Research and Training, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Nigeria
- 4 National Nuclear Research Institute, Ghana Atomic Energy Commission, Accra, Ghana
- 5 Centre for Energy Research and Training, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Nigeria
Abstract
The National Nuclear Research Institute of the Ghana Atomic Energy Commission is undertaking steps to convert the Ghana Research Reactor-1 from HEU Core to LEU. The proposed LEU core consists of 12.5% enriched UO 2 fuel elements clad in Zircaloy-4 alloy. This is done in collaboration with Reduced Enrichment for Research and Test Reactor. The versatile MCNP code was used to analyse the neutronics parameters given in the SAR of HEU core, thereby characterizing the core. Subsequently, the LEU core was indentified with necessary changes to the HEU MCNP model. It was ascertained that the reactivity for the LEU core with the same number of fuel pins as the HEU was inadequate, hence the fuel pins were increased from 344 to 348. The neutron flux at the irradiation sites was found to be below the nominal value at full power for the LEU and hence the nominal power was increased to 34 kW for a nominal flux value of 1 × 10 12 n/cm 2. s. The parameters investigated for the HEU and LEU are shown in this paper.
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