Experimental validation of effectiveness of rod-type burnable poisons on reactivity control in HTTR

In block-type high temperature gas-cooled reactors (HTGRs), insertion depth of control rods (CRs) into a core should be retained shallow to keep fuel temperature below 1495 °C through a burnup period, and hence excess reactivity should be reduced through a different method. Loading burnable poisons (BPs) into the core is considered as a method to resolve this problem as in case of light water reactors (LWRs). Effectiveness of BPs on reactivity control in LWRs has been validated by experimental data, however, this has not been done yet for HTGRs, because there was not enough burnup characteristics data for HTGRs required for the validation. The High Temperature Engineering Test Reactor (HTTR) is a block-type HTGRs and it adopts rod-type BPs to control reactivity. The HTTR has been operated up to middle burnup, and thereby the experimental data was expected to show effect of the BPs on the reactivity control. Hence, in order to validate effectiveness of rod-type BPs on reactivity control in the HTTR, we investigated on the HTTR results whether the BPs have functioned as designed. As a result, the CRs insertion depth has been retained shallow within allowable range, and then effectiveness of rod-type BPs on reactivity control in the HTTR was validated.