Simulation on the HTTR Control Rod Withdrawal Test

This paper describes the GAMMA+ code simulation of HTTR control rod withdrawal test. The simulation is done to examine the effect of GAMMA+ code's single-zone and multi-zone point kinetics models on the prediction of the reactor power response during HTTR control rod withdrawal test. In addition, it has an objective to examine how the reactor power response is affected by the application of the fuel temperature coefficients on TRISO kernel or compact rod. The calculation results of reactivity response and reactor power response are compared with the test results which were obtained at the initial power of 15.2 MW with the amount of reactivity insertion by control rod withdrawal to 3.4e-04 (dk/k) in 6.59 seconds. All GAMMA+ simulation results on a HTTR CRW test showed good predictions with the measured data. In particular, TRISO Kernel Model where the fuel temperature coefficients applied on the TRISO particle produced a better prediction within a 1.5% measured data and made no difference between the single-zone model and the multi-zone point kinetics model. During the control rod withdrawal event which is a fast transient, the total reactivity is mainly affected by the inserted reactivity and the reactivity response due to the change of the fuel temperature and the graphite moderator temperature