"PREDICTION THE PERFORMANCE OF THE IAEA 10 MW MTR RESEARCH REACTOR AT TRANSIENT STARTUP"

Document Type : Original Article

Author

ENRRA, 3 ahmed elzomer, nasrcity

Abstract

In this research, a new dynamic model is developed for IAEA 10 MW MTR as research reactor. The developed dynamic model predicts the performance of the core design and the thermal hydraulic behavior in reactivity variations conditions for controlling startup conditions to reach criticality. The startup is formed by increasing or decreasing the reactivity due to inserting or withdrawal of a control rod with/without an external of neutron source. The developed model is a dynamic modeling made by MATLAB/SIMULINK with a systematic solution of a combination of Ordinary Differential Equations (ODE) of Point Kinetic Equation (PKE) and the thermal hydraulic equations to calculate the change of neutron density, fuel and cooling temperatures through reaching the critical state before a new reactivity is added. The developed dynamic model predictions are compared with the calculations performed in various establishments using other codes. The results showed that the developed model can provide accurate predictions during transient conditions; and can be used for analyzing the lowest power reactors encountered in practice.

Keywords