Effect of Reducing Fuel Enrichment on the Void Reactivity — Part II: Analytical Study

The results of analyses on the void reactivity measurements performed in the Kyoto University Critical Assembly using medium-enriched uranium fuel as well as highly enriched uranium fuel are provided. In consideration of the heterogeneity of a complex core, four-group constants were generated by SRAC, a standard thermal reactor code system for reactor design and analysis at the Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute. The eigenvalue and perturbation calculations were subsequently performed by the 2D-FEM-KUR code, which is a two-dimensional diffusion code based on the finite element method. The calculated eigenvalue k_eff agreed with the measured value to within 0.5% in the calculated-to-experiment ratio. The void reactivity calculated by perturbation theory approximately reproduced the experimental data including the spatial dependence. The discrepancy between the calculated and measured void reactivity was <0.05 × 10⁻³ Δ k / k per voided flow channel.