Subcriticality of Philippine Research Reactor-1 fuel storage facility

Authors

Ronald Daryll Espino Gatchalian ⋅ PH Philippine Nuclear Research Institute, Department of Science and Technology
Alvie Asuncion Astronomo ⋅ PH Philippine Nuclear Research Institute, Department of Science and Technology
Julius Federico Miko Jecong ⋅ PH Philippine Nuclear Research Institute, Department of Science and Technology
Frederick Corpus Hila ⋅ PH Philippine Nuclear Research Institute, Department of Science and Technology

Abstract

The Philippine Research Reactor-1 (PRR-1) storage facility contains enough nuclear material for which a criticality accident is credible. To meet the objectives of nuclear criticality safety, safety criteria should be based on the value of the effective multiplication factor (k_eff) where k_eff < 1 means that the system is subcritical and the neutron fission chain reaction cannot be maintained. We calculated the k_eff of the storage tank containing the 113 TRIGA fuel rods and other core components of PRR-1 using MCNP5, a Monte Carlo transport code. With a criticality calculation control of 1,000 active cycles with nominally 10⁴ neutrons per cycle, our results show a k_eff of 0.61403 ± 0.00059 at the 99% confidence level. It was found that the system has a large safety margin of
–62.858% Δk/k due to the design of the storage rack as a passive engineered safety measure that restricts the dimension and shape of the system to a favorable geometry. The results of our study indicate that the current PRR-1 fuel storage facility is criticality safe.

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Issue

2018: Proceedings of the 36th Samahang Pisika ng Pilipinas Physics Conference

Article ID

SPP-2018-2G-04

Section

Plasma and Earth Physics

Published

2018-05-21

How to Cite

[1]

RDE Gatchalian, AA Astronomo, JFM Jecong, and FC Hila, Subcriticality of Philippine Research Reactor-1 fuel storage facility, Proceedings of the Samahang Pisika ng Pilipinas 36, SPP-2018-2G-04 (2018). URL: https://proceedings.spp-online.org/article/view/SPP-2018-2G-04.