Parametric evaluation of mixed (low and high enriched) fuel core for a swimming pool type research reactor

A study has been carried out to evaluate the performance of a swimming pool type research reactor core comprised of mixed (low and high enriched) uranium fuel. The study includes the calculations of core reactivity, worth of control rods and core criticality at the Beginning Of Life (BOL) of the core and for two operating conditions Cold Zero Power (CZP) and Hot Full Power (HFP). Further, to ensure safe and stable operation of the core from nuclear design point of view, average power densities in the fuel region, power peaking factors, axial power distribution in the hot channel and reactivity feed back coefficients have also been calculated. Two group fluxes have also been determined at different irradiation locations. All these calculations have been carried out employing reactor lattice code WIMS-D14 and reactor analysis code CITATION The calculated results show reasonably good agreement with the quoted operational data of the previous LEU cores. (Author)