It has been shown that supercriticality might occur for some postulated accident conditions at the TRIGA spent-fuel pool. However, the effect of burnup was not accounted for in previous studies. In this work, the combined effect of fuel burnup, pitch among fuel elements, and number of uniformly mixed absorber rods for a square arrangement on the spent-fuel pool keff is investigated.

The Monte Carlo computer code MCNP4B with the ENDF-B/VI library and detailed three dimensional geometry was used. The WIMS-D code was used to model the isotopic composition of the standard TRIGA and FLIP fuel for 5, 10, 20 and 30% burnup level and 2- and 4-yr cooling time.

The results show that out of the three studied effects, pitch from contact (3.75 cm) up to rack design pitch (8 cm), number of absorbers from zero to eight, and burnup up to 30%, the pitch has the greatest influence on the multiplication factor keff. In the interval in which the pitch was changed, keff decreased for up to ~0.4 for standard and ~0.3 for FLIP fuel. The number of absorber rods affects the multiplication factor much less. This effect is bigger for more compact arrangements, e.g., for contact of standard fuel elements with eight absorber rods among them, keff values are smaller for ~0.2 (~0.1 for FLIP) than for arrangements without absorber rods almost regardless of the burnup. The effect of burnup is the smallest. For standard fuel elements, it is ~0.1 for almost all pitches and numbers of absorbers. For FLIP fuel, it is smaller for a factor of 3, but increases with the burnup for compact arrangements. Cooling time of fuel has just a minor effect on the keff of spent-fuel pool and can be neglected in spent-fuel pool design.