FUEL CYCLE PROCESS OF PRESSURIZED-TUBE REACTOR Russian patent published in 2005 - IPC

FIELD: controlling fuel cycle of pressurized-tube reactor including control of total power generation in process subchannels.

SUBSTANCE: proposed fuel cycle process that may be found useful to maintain serviceability of graphite blocks in reactor core during design and beyond-design running periods of reactor including condition of graphite blocks in subchannels of reactor whose beyond-design period has been prolonged involves programmable rearrangement of fuel assemblies, removal of spent fuel assemblies, and installation of new ones, displacement of control rods, and protection; newly proposed procedures are periodic detection of subchannels whose power generation time ranges between E^max ₁ and (E^max ₁ - ΔE₁) MW-day, where E^max ₁ is maximal power generation time in reactor subchannel in beginning of each period, MW-dya; ΔE₁ is specified energy generation time of i-th period in detected subchannels of reactor, MW-day. Control of rate of accumulation of graphite-block neutron fluence is effected therein by programmable rearrangements of these fuel-assembly subchannels with burn-up of 1500 - 2600 MW-day extracted from other subchannels of reactor into process channels.

EFFECT: enhanced effectiveness of proposed process.

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