Neutronic behaviors, such as distributions of neutron flux, adjoint neutron flux in macroscopic aspects, and neutron spectra, adjoint neutron spectra, spacial distributions of fissile nuclei fission fraction and their burnup variations in microscopic aspects, and effects of
238U fission with high energy neutrons are compared and analysed for three type cores in 1, 000MWe class FBR plants, that is, homogeneous two region oxide and metal cores, and an axially heterogeneous oxide core, and then the following features are brought out.
(1) For neutron spectra in large volume cores, influences of Pu enrichment difference in core regions are fairly moderated by neutron migration and
238U fission, and variations due to burnup effects are also reduced by
238U fission and its high conversion to
239Pu.
(2) Adjoint neutron spectra have flattened distributions in common with three type cores and these are resulted in favorite effects on the stable behaviors of neutrons.
Based on these microscopic neutron behaviors with small spacial and cycle variations in these cores, some considerations to future prospects of FBR core design are discussed.
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