Transient Simulation of Gas Bubble in a Medium Sized Lead Cooled Fast Reactor

• A common problem for many liquid metal cooled fast reactor designs is the positive void worth of the coolant. In this context, an advantage of lead cooled fast reactors is the high temperature of coolant boiling. In contrast to sodium cooled fast reactors this, in practice, precludes coolant boiling. However, partial voiding of the core could result from e.g. gas bubbles entering the core from below. This would introduce a positive reactivity, if the bubble is large enough. In this paper we model this type of event using a point kinetics code coupled to a heat transport code. The reactivity parameters are obtained from a Monte Carlo code. The 300 MWth reactor design Alfred is used as a test case. We show that in general the reactor design studied is robust in such events, and we conclude that small bubbles a measureable Power oscillation would occur. For very large bubbles there exist a possibility of core damage. The cladding is the most sensitive part.

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TEKNIK OCH TEKNOLOGIER  -- Naturresursteknik -- Energisystem (hsv//swe)

ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY  -- Environmental Engineering -- Energy Systems (hsv//eng)

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