Boron Depletion in High-Temperature Gas-Cooled Reactor

There is a small quantity of boron as impurity in the core and graphite reflector of pebble bed high-temperature gas-cooled reactor (HTR). Boron and its change along depletion have influence on the reactivity of the reactor. The depletion characteristics of boron were calculated for each batch of fuel element along its operation history for the multi-pass pebble bed core, and for each region of graphite reflector. The reactivity worth of boron and its change along depletion were calculated with the perturbation theory. According to the analysis, the boron is depleted rapidly, therefore the influence on the reactivity also reduces rapidly.