Test stand for research on the physics of high-temperature gas-cooled reactors

This paper presents an investigation of the physical characteristics on critical assemblies during the development of new reactors. High-temperature gas-cooled reactors (HTGR), under development in the Soviet Union and elsewhere, have many new aspects. The I.V. Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy has built a critical stand GROG which is used to study the physics of HTGR, i.e., the physics that is common to all modifications and the specific physics that takes into account the features of different versions of HTGR, primarily the VG-400. In the initial stage, when the full-scale elements are absent, the physics of HTGR are studied on critical assemblies formed of model elements. Since products of the reaction of the fuel with neutrons are difficult to use in assemblies, problems pertaining to the burn-up of fuel are also considered on systems containing model elements