An alternative experimental approach for subcritical configurations of the IPEN/MB-01 nuclear reactor

This work presents an alternative approach for the reactivity worth experiments analysis in the IPEN/MB-01 reactor considering highly subcritical arrays. In order to reach the subcritical levels, the removal of a specific number of fuel rods is proposed. Twenty three configurations were carried out for this purpose. The control bank insertion experiment was used only as reference for the fuel rod experiment and, in addition, the control banks were maintained completely withdrawn during all the fuel rods experiment. The theoretical simulation results using the MCNP5 code and the ENDF/B-VII.0 library neutron data are in a very good agreement to experimental results.