Uncertainty and sensitivity analysis of filling fraction of pebble bed in pebble bed HTR

Abstract The filling fraction of pebble bed in each small region has some uncertainty, which will contribute to the total uncertainty in the key parameters of pebble bed core, such as power peak, axial offset, k eff and so on. In fact, the heavy metal content and graphite content of the corresponding region will change synchronously due to the perturbation of filling fraction but the ratio of atomic number density of moderator to the fuel (carbon–uranium) is still constant. To investigate these effects, the Chinese demonstration plant HTR-PM was selected as the research object and the VSOP code and CUSA package were used to conduct detailed analysis of the influence of the uncertainty in the filling fraction on the HTR-PM output variables of interest, based on the propagation of input uncertainties by using statistical sampling method to calculate uncertainty and sensitivity information from the simulation results. At the same time, uncertainty and sensitivity analysis of uranium loading had also been conducted for comparative analysis to study the mechanism of effect of uncertainty in the filling fraction to key parameters, and therefore only the heavy metal content of the corresponding region changes in the presence of perturbation of uranium loading. Finally, the propagated uncertainty in the power peak, axial offset and k eff of HTR-PM core was obtained and the primary drivers of the uncertainty in the key parameters were identified by sensitivity analysis.