Impact of fuel thermal conductivity degradation on Doppler feedback during rod ejection accident

•Burnup dependent fuel thermal conductivity model was implemented in CTF/TORT-TD.•Impact of fuel thermal conductivity degradation on Doppler feedback during REA was investigated.•Modeling fuel thermal conductivity degradation with burnup is important for LWR safety analyses. This paper discusses the importance of the fuel thermal conductivity degradation modeling for accurate predictions of the Doppler feedback during reactivity insertion transients. The impact of the fuel thermal conductivity degradation model, recently implemented in the coupled sub-channel thermal-hydraulic/time-dependent neutron transport code system CTF/TORT-TD, on Doppler feedback predictions during a control rod ejection accident was investigated. The rod ejection was simulated for a 4×4 pressurized water reactor pin array, extracted from the Purdue University MOX (mixed oxide) benchmark, starting at both hot zero power and hot full power conditions with the control rod being half-inserted before the ejection. The two scenarios were simulated with CTF/TORT-TD and the effect of the fuel thermal conductivity degradation on the Doppler feedback was analyzed. The results were compared with existing reference calculations performed with the coupled sub-channel thermal-hydraulic/time-dependent neutron transport/fuel performance code system CTF/TORT-TD/FRAPCON-FRAPTRAN. The power pulse, the time evolution of average fuel temperature, and the peak enthalpy rise during the transient were examined. It was confirmed that the impact of the fuel thermal conductivity degradation is more significant when the control rod is ejected at hot full power conditions. If the fuel conductivity degradation was not taken into account, less conservative CTF/TORT-TD predictions for the transient power response were obtained. For the selected 4×4 pin array, the coupled code calculated 13MW higher power pulse when modeling degradation effects on fuel conductivity. The difference in the power response is due to the less negative prompt fuel temperature (Doppler) coefficient at elevated temperatures. Lower thermal conductivity will lead to higher fuel pellet temperatures, and subsequently to a less negative Doppler coefficient, which will result in a stronger power pulse. The maximum fuel enthalpy rise during the hot full power rod ejection accident was found to be 60cal/g (251,208J/kg).