The effect of high pressure test loop (HPTL) on the Reactivity of ET-RR-2 reactor

The second Egyptian Research Reactor ET-RR-2 is a multipurpose research reactor. It is an open pool type, with nominal power of 22 MW water-cooled. The reactor pool is designed to accommodate two fuel test loops mainly 500 and 20 KW loop in the reactor reflector to enable performing experiments on the behavior of fuel rods for nuclear reactors under their operating conditions. For that, inserted high-pressure test loop (HPTL) loaded with suggested CANDU type fuel element in the reactor core is important to achieve the above reason. From the neutronic safety point of view, it is necessary to study the mutual neutronic and reactivity effect between the reactor core and HPTL. This paper aimed at the study of the temperature coefficients of fuel and moderator of the CANDU type fuel element at different 235U enrichments, and the effect of HPTL on the reactor core reactivity. The effect of flooding the contact second shut down system (SSS) chamber with water and gadolinium nitrate on the reactor core reactivity in the presence of HPTL. All analysis was performed with the WIMSD4 and DIXY2 codes. This study shows that, an unacceptable change of reactor core reactivity was found due to the presence of the HPTL and the maximum inserted reactivity does not exceed 527 pcm at high possible 235U enrichment (10%).