Neutronic and thermal-hydraulic assessment of the TRR with new core designed based on tubular fuels

Herein, the feasibility study of the Tehran Research Reactor (TRR) with a new core designed based on tubular fuels from the neutronic, thermal-hydraulic, safety, and operational points of are investigated using MCNPX, WIMS, CITATION, Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), and RELAP codes. According to the results, the total neutron flux in the new core with tubular fuels is increased by more than 14.3 % compared with the current core of the TRR with plate-type fuels. Moreover, due to the higher fuel amount in the tubular compared with plate-type fuels (about 17 % in similar conditions), its effective multiplication factor is much higher than the TRR with plate-type fuels. Moreover, the results show that the maximum cladding temperature is sufficiently lower than 105 degrees C and the produced heat in the tubular fuel are removed without changing the current flow rate of the core. Furthermore, the maximum fuel temperature in tubular fuel is about 10 degrees C lower than the maximum fuel temperature in the current standard fuel element.