Abstract
Fuel undergoes significant nuclear transformations during its life in the reactor. Fission reactions modify isotopic concentrations and considerably affect neutron flux calculations. Heavy isotopes undergo fission and produce absorbing fission products that modify the neutron spectrum. Furthermore, fissile plutonium isotopes are also formed by capture reactions for uranium 238 and thus partially regenerate the fuel. The variations in the concentration of xenon 135—a powerful absorbing isotope produced by fission—lead to transient reactivity perturbations that can hinder the smooth running of the reactor for the operator: this is the so-called “iodine pit”. Enrico Fermi experimentally discovered the “xenon effect” which may prevent the reactor from starting, although for a short period only. In the higher power Hanford reactor (USA), initially conceived to produce plutonium for the atomic bomb, Eugen Wigner allowed for voided channels as he anticipated the need to insert supplementary uranium pins to counter the xenon effect.
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Notes
- 1.
H. Bateman, Proc. Cambridge Phil. Soc. 15, 423 (1910). Harry Bateman (1882–1946) was a British mathematician who studied at Cambridge, Gottingen and Paris. He left for the United States in 1910 and defended his PhD thesis in 1913 at the prestigious John Hopkins University. He became a professor at Caltech in 1917. He made several contributions to numerical analysis for physics in various fields such as electromagnetism, fluid mechanics and geophysics. In 1936, he became the vice-president of the American Mathematical Society. His favorite pastime was writing pages on the properties of transcendental functions. After his death, at the end of the 1940s, a team of well-known mathematicians, numbering Arthur Erdeli and F. Oberhettinger, worked on this huge collection: the Bateman Manuscripts were published as five famous books: Higher Transcendental Functions Volumes 1, 2, 3, and Tables of Integral Transforms 1 and 2, which are of great interest to a reactor physicist, especially volume 1 (Erdélyi 1954), which contains tables of Fourier and Laplace transforms.
- 2.
This is the value assigned in EDF codes.
- 3.
Frédéric Laugier (1973–) began his career at EDF/R&D in 2001 after his studies at the Ecole Centrale de Paris. He is a world-recognized specialist in decay heat, and he has contributed to improvement of the international norms in this field. For instance, in 2007, he proposed a didactic representation of decay heat using Laugier curves having a precision/complexity ratio sufficient to enable rapid calculation of this parameter.
(Courtesy Laugier) - 4.
François Storrer: Contribution à l’élaboration et la qualification de la bibliothèque DARLING des données nucléaires de base du formulaire multifilière DARWIN de la physique du cycle du combustible [Contribution to the conception and validation of the DARLING library of basic nuclear data for the DARWIN scheme for fuel cycle physics], PhD thesis, University of Orsay (1993).
- 5.
J.K. Dickens, T.A. Love and al, Nucl.Sci. Eng., 106 (1980).
- 6.
M. Akiyama, S. An, Jap. At. En. Soc., 709 (1982).
- 7.
This is the method used in the STRAPONTIN code (S. Marguet , O. Dekens , F. Laugier et. al.), which is the official decay heat calculation code for PWR at EDF.
- 8.
Richard Babut : Modélisation des réactions (α, n) sur les noyaux légers pour déterminer la source inhérente d’un réacteur nucléaire [Modeling of (α, n) reactions on light nuclides to determine the inherent source of a nuclear reactor], PhD from Blaise Pascal University (2002).
- 9.
From JEF 2.2. It is the most absorbing fission product in thermal spectrum (but not in fast spectrum where it is superseded by samarium 151).
- 10.
Gilles Mathonnière : Etudes de problèmes neutroniques liés à la présence de xénon dans les réacteurs à eau pressurisée [Neutron studies on the presence of xenon in pressurized water reactors], PhD thesis at the University of Orsay (1988).
- 11.
from JEF 2.2
- 12.
David Couyras : personal communication
- 13.
Patrick Chaucheprat : Qualification du calcul des poisons consommables au gadolinium dans les réacteurs à eau [Experimental validation of the calculation of burnable poisons in water reactors], PhD thesis, University of Orsay (1988).
- 14.
Mohamed Nasr : Etude des poisons consommables et qualification du gadolinium dans les réacteurs à eau [Study of burnable poisons and experimental validation of gadolinium in water reactors], PhD thesis, University of Orsay (1979).
- 15.
Pavel Klenov : Validation expérimentale des schémas de calcul relatifs aux absorbants et poisons consommables dans les REP [Experimental validation of calculation schemes for consumable poisons and absorbants in PWRs], PhD thesis, Université d’Aix-Marseille (1995).
- 16.
Paul Reuss states that in practice, mixtures occur, making it difficult to obtain enrichment above 3 or 4% in a single cycle.
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Marguet, S. (2017). Fuel Cycle Physics. In: The Physics of Nuclear Reactors. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-59560-3_15
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