Issue |
MATEC Web Conf.
Volume 398, 2024
2nd International Conference on Modern Technologies in Mechanical & Materials Engineering (MTME-2024)
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Article Number | 01008 | |
Number of page(s) | 15 | |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/matecconf/202439801008 | |
Published online | 25 June 2024 |
Fuel Performance Comparison of Uranium Nitride and Uranium Carbide in VVER-1200 using OpenMC
US-Pakistan Centre for Advanced Studies in Energy, National University of Science and Technology (NUST), Islamabad, Pakistan
Nuclear power is a reliable and large-scale source of GHG-free electricity. This study asses the viability of ATF fuel of uranium nitride (UN) and uranium carbide (UC) as fuel for the VVER-1200 reactor. A comprehensive overview of the VVER-1200 and Accident Tolerant fuels is conducted. A review of the development of ATFs identified UN and UC as viable fuels for the VVER reactor. The study utilizes OpenMC to model the VVER-1200 core and compares the behaviour of ATF with conventional fuel. Key findings include comparable k-eff values implying similar neutronic behaviour. UO2 and UC showed similar fission rates across the core while UN showed higher neutron flux and fission rate in the outer part of the core. The base Z44B2 showed increased flux and fission rate with UN as the fuel. ATF behaviour showed to be comparable to the UO2 and thus is a potential alternative to conventional fuels. ATFs provide an additional level of safety because of higher melting points and higher thermal conductivity. This study can be further improved to investigate the depletion of ATFs so that the behaviours of the core over large periods of time, fission products and operator safety can be assessed. Base case k-eff value of 1.24795 are comparable to k-eff values generated by UN and UC.
Key words: Nuclear Power / VVER / Uranium Nitride (UN) / Uranium Carbide (UC) / OpenMC / Pressurized Water Reactor (PWR) / Accident Tolerant Fuels (ATF)
© The Authors, published by EDP Sciences, 2024
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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