ATR LEU Monolithic Foil-Type Fuel with Integral Cladding Burnable Absorber – Neutronics Performance Evaluation Page: 4 of 12
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RRFM-IGORR 2012
" The OSCC positions were set to 1050.
" The resultant MCNP-calculated tallies were normalized to a core source power of 115 MW.
3.2 LEU Monolithic Foil-type and Integral Cladding Burnable Absorber Detailed
FE model
A LEU monolithic fuel design with varied fuel meat thickness in the four inner plates (plate-1 to
plate-4) and four outer plates (plate-16 to plate-19) was recommended in Ref. [2]. However,
those LEU fuel designs did not include the IOB loading minimization. Because the IOB (n,a)
reaction will produce Helium-4 (He-4), which can degrade the LEU foil fuel (UlOMo) type fuel
performance. An alternative burnable absorber loading option - Integral Cladding Burnable
Absorber (ICBA) is proposed in this study. In monolithic plates the fuel-cladding interface is
protected with Zr diffusion barrier. Therefore an addition of layer of burnable absorber (5 mil) in
ICBA was proposed, where the burnable absorber 10B can be totally separated from not only the
LEU foil-type fuel meat, but also from the fuel-cladding Zr diffusion barrier.
The optimization was achieved by reducing the fuel meat thickness as well as loading the two
inner/outer plates with 0.635 g of 10B in LEU ICBA Case. The isotopic concentration of 10B in
the boron of the burnable absorber is 20 wt%. The 10B loading specification of ICBA in plates-1,
-2, -18, and -19 are tabulated Table 1. The optimized LEU fuel plate specifications for the ICBA
Case are given in Table 2. Table 2 shows that the nominal fuel meat thickness is 0.0330 cm
(13 mil). The varied four inner plates (plate-1 to plate-4) fuel meat thicknesses are 0.0203 cm
(8 mil), 0.0203 cm (8 mil), 0.0354 cm (10 mil), and 0.0305 cm (12 mil), respectively. While the
varied 4 outer plates (plate-16 to plate-19) fuel meat thicknesses are 0.0305 cm (12 mil),
0.0354 cm (10 mil), 0.0203 cm (8 mil), and 0.0203 cm (8 mil), respectively. The detailed FE-18
model of LEU monolithic foil type ICBA Case is shown in Figure 1. The detailed MF-ICBA FE-
18 with 4 fuel plates with lOB (Plates-1 to -2 and -18 to -19) are plotted in Figure 2.
Table 1. Integral Cladding Burnable Absorber (ICBA) with Boron-10 Specification.ICBA Boron-10 Thickness ICBA Boron-10
ICBA ID g/cc mil. Vol. (cc) Mass (g)
ICBA-01 0.008 5 6.888 0.058
ICBA-02 0.020 5 7.332 0.149
ICBA-18 0.008 5 13.663 0.111
ICBA-19 0.022 5 14.138 0.317
Total 42.021 0.635
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Chang, Gray. ATR LEU Monolithic Foil-Type Fuel with Integral Cladding Burnable Absorber – Neutronics Performance Evaluation, article, March 1, 2012; Idaho Falls, Idaho. (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc835134/m1/4/?rotate=90: accessed April 23, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries Government Documents Department.