| Popis: |
The 3 MW TRIGA (Training, Research, Isotopes, General Atomics) Philippine Research Reactor-1 (PRR-1) at the DOST-PNRI achieved its first criticality on 08 Mar 1988 after its successful upgrade from a plate-type reactor. However, due to unresolved technical problems discovered weeks after the upgrade, the PRR-1 was considered inoperable and has been in shutdown status since then. The slightly irradiated TRIGA fuel rods of the PRR-1 are currently in an interim storage tank and are planned to be utilized in a subcritical reactor assembly. As part of the project to reuse the fuels, simulation models for both present and proposed configurations are important. In this work, we present the complete model of the former configuration of PRR-1 with 115 TRIGA fuel rods developed with the Serpent Monte Carlo code version 2 for simulation of criticality and neutronic analysis. The model of the TRIGA fuel rods was validated in the fresh fuel configuration through the benchmark analysis described in the 1988 reactor criticality report. The effective multiplication factors from the Serpent-2 simulation (𝒌𝒆𝒇𝒇 = 1.0690 ± 0.0012) and measured value of 1.0661 have been found to agree with a deviation of 259 pcm. Neutron flux and fission power distribution simulations using the same reactor configuration were also presented to serve as reference for future burn up calculations and fuel characterization. |
