Nuclear heating at the JSI TRIGA reactor: measurements and simulations

Abstract Nuclear heating plays an important aspect in design and deployment of both fission and fusion reactors and experimental devices in terms of cooling requirements. Two experimental campaigns in the framework of a collaboration project between the French Atomic and Alternative Energy Commission (CEA) and Jožef Stefan Institute (JSI), Slovenia, have been performed at the JSI TRIGA reactor for the experimental assessment of nuclear heating in fission and fusion-relevant materials by the differential calorimetry technique, based on the CALMOS and CARMEN differential calorimeters, previously developed at CEA. The results of the first campaign performed at reactor powers between 100 and 250 kW have already been reported, highlighting some measurement difficulties. Therefore, the second campaign was performed at a lower reactor power of 30 kW to overcome these issues. Moreover, a computational analysis of the experiments was performed using the JSIR2S code package to calculate the nuclear heating levels. Both experiments and their reproduction by simulations are described in detail. We present a comparison of the previously reported measured nuclear heating values of the first campaign with the computational results, with consistent underestimation by simulations by 8–35%. We report the experimental and computational results for the second experimental campaign performed at a reactor power of 30 kW. The simulated heating values were in agreement with the measurements within the measured heating uncertainty, with simulated heating 2.7–11.3% lower than the experimental values.