Study of TRICO II Reactor Startup and Shutdown Operations Using the OpenMC Calculation Code

Abstract

Nuclear reactor startup and shutdown procedures must be carried out with great care and efficiency. To ensure correct reactor operation, it is crucial to make and maintain the reactor critical during startup and subcritical during shutdown. In this paper, OpenMC computer code was used to model the TRICO II research reactor and simulate its startup and shutdown operations. Positions of the four control rods (transient rod, safety rod, regulating rod, and shim rod) were varied along positive z-axis for startup and negative z-axis for shutdown. The reactivity results obtained were compared with those of standard reactor startup and shutdown operations. This technique optimizes the probability of a better startup or shutdown operation and avoids wasting resources on trial-and-error testing.