Neutronic Analysis of LBE-Uranium Spallation Target Accelerator Driven System Loaded with Uranium Dioxide in TRISO Particles

Abstract

This study presents the neutronic performances of fissile breeding and energy production of a gas cooled accelerator-driven system with LBE-uranium dioxide (UO2) spallation target. The accelerator-driven system is designed and optimized by considering various target materials, in terms of neutronic. Two different materials, LBE + natural UO2 and LBE + 15% enrichment UO2 are selected as target materials. The target zone is divided into two parts, one within the other; the outer part is pure LBE target part, and the inner part is UO2 target part cooled with the helium gas. Tristructural-isotropic (TRISO)-coated fuel particles, containing UO2 fuel, are embedded in a carbon matrix pebble with the packing fraction of a 29%, and the pebbles are placed in the UO2 target part and in the fuel core with the packing fraction of a 60%. The fuel core is cooled with helium that is a high-temperature coolant. The target is bombarded with the continuous beams of a 1 GeV protons to produce high-flux neutrons that enter the fuel core. The fuel core is surrounded with a graphite reflector zone serving as both effective moderation and reflection of these neutrons. Furthermore, the whole system is enclosed by boron carbide, B4C (shielding zone), to prevent the neutrons leakage out of the accelerator-driven system. The high-energy Monte Carlo code MCNPX along with the LA150 library is used for neutronic calculations. The numerical results bring out that the investigated accelerator-driven system has a high neutronic performance, from the energy production and fissile breeding points of view. Namely, it can be obtained over the thermal power of a 350 MW and produced over the fissile breeding of a 300 g/day.