Prediction of the Material Composition of the VVER-type Reactor Burned Pellet with Use of Neutron-Physical Codes
Abstract
The purpose of neutron-physical calculations is typically isotopic composition of the fuel elements. However, in solving materials science problems related to nuclear fuel, researchers are usually interested in elemental composition of the fuel pellets, because the chemical and thermal physic properties are the same for different
isotopes of one chemical element. Nevertheless, for modeling of the elemental composition one should perform calculation of the isotopic composition and carry out the summation over all isotopes of a given chemical element. The development of computational tools allows the use of improved methods and codes, which held the consequent solution of tasks of heat conduction, neutron transport, and kinetics of
nuclides transformation. Thus the calculations take into account the dependence of the thermal conductivity from the changing isotopic composition and fuel burnup. This allows to perform neutron-physical and thermal-physical calculations of the reactor with detailed temperature distribution, taking into account temperature dependence of thermal conductivity and other characteristics. This approach was applied to calculations of the fuel pellet of the VVER type reactor and calculation of its elemental composition.
Keywords: materials science, elemental composition, fuel pellet.
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