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Evaluation of the fraction of delayed photoneutrons for TMSR-SF1

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Abstract

The 10 MWth solid-fueled thorium molten salt reactor (TMSR-SF1) is a FLiBe salt-cooled pebble bed reactor to be deployed in 5–10 years, designed by the TMSR group. Due to a large amount of beryllium in the core, the photoneutrons are produced via (γ, n) reactions. Some of them are generated a long time after the fission event and therefore are considered as delayed neutrons. In this paper, we redefine the effective delayed neutrons into two fractions: the delayed fission neutron fraction and the delayed photoneutron fraction. With some reasonable assumptions, the inner product method and the k-ratio method are adopted for studying the effective delayed photoneutron fraction. In the k-ratio method, the Monte Carlo code MCNP6 is used to evaluate the effective photoneutron fraction as the ratio between the multiplication factors with and without contribution of the delayed neutrons and photoneutrons. In the inner product method, with the Monte Carlo and deterministic codes together, we use the adjoint neutron flux as a weighting function for the neutrons and photoneutrons generated in the core. Results of the two methods agree well with each other, but the k-ratio method requires much more computing time for the same precision.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Jiading Campus, Shanghai, 201800, China

    Rui-Min Ji, Ye Dai, Gui-Feng Zhu, Shi-He Yu, Yang Zou & Gui-Min Liu

  2. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China

    Rui-Min Ji

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  1. Rui-Min Ji
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  2. Ye Dai
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  3. Gui-Feng Zhu
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  4. Shi-He Yu
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  5. Yang Zou
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  6. Gui-Min Liu
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Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Yang Zou or Gui-Min Liu.

Additional information

This work was supported by the Chinese TMSR Strategic Pioneer Science and Technology Project (No. XDA02010000).

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Ji, RM., Dai, Y., Zhu, GF. et al. Evaluation of the fraction of delayed photoneutrons for TMSR-SF1. NUCL SCI TECH 28, 135 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41365-017-0285-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s41365-017-0285-9

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