Preliminary Analysis on Reactivity Insertion Transient of Natural Circulation Reactor

When a malfunction of the reactor control system occurs, there's a chance that the positive reactivity is inserted into the core, resulting in the increase of the core power. With the combination of the failure of the related safety features, this may raise the temperature of the core material beyond the design limit to break its integrity. For the fast nuclear reactors like FFTF and CRBRP, the overpower trip is initiated when the power reaches 115% of rated value to keep the fuel from melting. In this study, the system response to the reactivity insertion transient on a liquid metal cooled natural circulation reactor is analyzed utilizing an in-house code based on a momentum integral model. Utilizing an in-house system analysis code, a set of numerical simulation is carried out on the reactivity ramp insertion transients which showed that the role of reactivity feedback is significant in mitigating the time to failure, and the evolution of the natural circulation mass flow is rather slow to generate meaningful feedback effect. It is also observed that in terms of the peak cladding temperature, smaller reactivity insertion transient generated more severe outcome owing to increased accumulation of the thermal energy within fuel pins. Thus, it may require an extra attention to carefully monitor and capture the mild transients to avoid potential drastic results