Dependence of control rod worth on fuel burnup

One important parameter in the design and the analysis of a nuclear reactor core is the reactivity worth of the control rods, i.e. their efficiency to absorb excess reactivity. The control rod worth is affected by parameters such as the fuel burnup in the rod vicinity, the Xe concentration in the core, the operational time of the rod and its position in the core. In the present work, two different computational approaches, a deterministic and a stochastic one, were used for the determination of the rods worth dependence on the fuel burnup level and the Xe concentration level in a conceptual, symmetric reactor core, based on the MTR fuel assemblies used in the Greek Research Reactor (GRR-1). For the deterministic approach the neutronics code system composed by the SCALE modules NITAWL and XSDRN and the diffusion code CITATION was used, while for the stochastic one the Monte Carlo code TRIPOLI was applied. The study showed that when Xe is present in the core, the rods worth is significantly reduced, while the rod worth variation with increasing burnup depends on the rods position in the core grid. The rod worth obtained with the use of the Monte Carlo code is higher than the one obtained from the deterministic code.