Annals of Nuclear Energy 142 (2020) 107382

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Annals of Nuclear Energy

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/anucene

Neutronic design study of an integrated space nuclear reactor with

Stirling engine
Jian Li a, Qin Zhou b,c, Jian Mou d, Ruiqiong Zhai a, Boying Lin a, Yan Xia a,⇑
a
Beijing Institute of Spacecraft Environment Engineering, Science and Technology on Reliability and Environment Laboratory, Beijing 100094, China
b
Institute of Nuclear and New Energy Technology, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China
c
Key Laboratory of Advanced Reactor Engineering and Safety, Ministry of Education, Beijing 100084, China
d
Key Laboratory of Space Energy Conversion Technology, Technical Institute of Physics and Chemistry, CAS, Beijing 100190, China

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: The space nuclear power system is an ideal choice for planetary and deep space exploration. The inte-
Received 9 October 2019 grated space nuclear reactor with Stirling engine (ACMIR) has the advantages of compact structure, high
Received in revised form 31 December 2019 power density, satisfactory safety, high reliability and favorable economy. ACMIR adopts high enriched
Accepted 6 February 2020
UN rods as the fuel and helium as the coolant. The rotating control drums are utilized as the reactivity
Available online 12 February 2020
control strategy. In this paper, the neutronic studies have been performed to obtain the physical scheme
of a 5 kWe ACMIR core. At the same time, a sensitivity study on the nuclear data library is conducted.
Keywords:
Furthermore, we analyze the reactivity of the core, reactivity coefficients, control drum worth, criticality
Space nuclear reactor
ACMIR
safety during drop accident, neutron flux and power distribution. Results show that the proposed phys-
Physical scheme ical scheme of ACMIR, as a superior choice for the kilowatt-class space nuclear system, meets the require-
Neutronic characteristics ments of criticality safety and operating life.
Ó 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction power is on the order of kilowatts, mainly used as the auxiliary

The power needs for the space application have increased
greatly over the past decades. The space nuclear power system,
referring to the system which can provide electricity and propul-
sion for the spacecraft, including the radioactive electricity gener-
ator (RTG) and the space nuclear reactor (IAEA, 2005), could be an
enabling or enhancing candidate for the deep space exploration
(Su et al., 2016). For energy requirements below 1 kWe, radioiso-
tope power supplies show a good economic performance. For
energy requirements more than 1 kWe, space nuclear reactor
power supplies have outstanding advantages, such as good envi-
ronmental adaptability, long service life, wide power range, and
small system weight.
The micro-modular space nuclear reactors (MMR) with electric-
ity output of kilowatts have the advantages of compact structure,
high reliability and excellent expandability. The kilowatt-class
space nuclear reactor power supply is a hot spot in the develop-
ment of space nuclear reactor. In history, a total of 36 space nuclear
reactor power sources have been launched into space, including
the US SNAP-10A (IAEA, 2005), the Soviet Union’s BUK (Bennett,
1989) and TOPAZ-I (El-Genk, 2009), and their output electricity
⇑ Corresponding author.
E-mail address: xiayan_cast@163.com (Y. Xia).
power for surveillance satellites. After entering the 21st century,
the US has carried out its Promethus project (Randolph et al.,
2005), FSP project (Palac et al., 2009) and Kilopower plan (Mason
et al., 2013.). Kilopower was started in 2010 with the aim of study-
ing kilowatt-class low-power space nuclear reactor power supplies
as a backup power source for radioisotope power supplies for small
deep space probes. Kilopower benchmark utilizes U-Mo alloy as
fuel and sodium heat pipe as coolant. The thermal power is 13
kWt. In 2015, based on the DUFF experiment, LANL and GRC con-
ducted a non-nuclear test verification of the kilowatt-scale heat
pipe cooling reactor prototype (KRUSTY), which confirmed that
the operating characteristics were in line with expectations and
demonstrated the accuracy of the simulation software analysis.
On May 2, 2018, LANL successfully completed the nuclear test of
KRUSTY under steady state, transient and accident conditions.
According to the cooling strategy of the reactor core, space
nuclear reactors can be classified into gas-cooled reactors, liquid-
cooled reactors, heat pipe cooled reactors, etc. Therein, the gas-
cooled reactor generally has the stable chemical property, which
is beneficial to space nuclear power application. In addition, the
space nuclear reactor has two types of energy conversion scenario,
that are static conversion (such as thermionic conversion, thermo-
electric conversion, alkali metal thermoelectric conversion
and thermal photovoltaic conversion) and dynamic conversion

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.anucene.2020.107382
0306-4549/Ó 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
2 J. Li et al. / Annals of Nuclear Energy 142 (2020) 107382

(such as Rankine cycles, Stirling cycles and Brayton cycles). Static
conversion has the advantages of high reliability and satisfactory
load followability, but its conversion efficiency is relatively low,
generally not exceeding 10%. In dynamic transformation, Stirling
cycle achieves the highest conversion efficiency and is suitable for
kilowatt-class power requirements. The gas-cooled reactor
combined with Stirling engine could be a promising candidate for
a kilowatt nuclear reactor power system (Longhurst et al., 2001).

Table 1
Main design parameters of ACMIR.

Parameter Value
Thermal power, kWt 20
Operation life, year 5
Widths across flats of hexagonal prism, cm 15.7
Number of fuel element 61
Height of fuel element, cm 30
Fuel pellet UN
Outer/inner radius of fuel pellet, cm 0.88/0.18
Thickness of gas gap, cm 0.012
Thickness of Re layer, cm 0.05
Thickness of cladding, cm 0.05
Thickness of top/bottom reflector, cm 3/3
Thickness of pressure vessel, cm 0.5
Height of the radial reflector, cm 30
Outer radius of the radial reflector, cm 15.5
Number of control drums 6
Outer radius of the control drum, cm 3.8
Thickness of B4C absorber, cm 0.3
2
Thickness of interlayer, cm 0.1
U235 inventory, kg 52.17
Total weight of BeO reflector, kg 56.20
Weight of B4C absorber, kg 0.30
Weight of Re, kg 10.52
Weight of cladding, kg 3.98
Total weight of the reactor, kg 128
Weight of Stirling engine, kg 177
Weight of radiation shielding in the pressure vessel, kg 33
Weight of the radiator, kg 200
Fig. 1. Brief schematics of ACMIR. Total mass of ACMIR, kg 538

Fig. 2. Cross-section view of ACMIR core.

 J. Li et al. / Annals of Nuclear Energy 142 (2020) 107382 3

Table 2 the power conversion components (such as the power piston, the
keff results of ACMIR based on different nuclear data libraries. gas distribution piston, linear motor, regenerator, heat pipe),
Library keff Relative deviation shielding structures, radiator and so on. ACMIR adopts an inte-
Existing RMC library 1.01418 – grated compact design which integrates the reactor core and
ENDF/B-VII.0 1.01350 6.71E-04 power conversion units in the pressure vessel. A waste heat
ENDF/B-VII.1 1.00696 7.13E-03 discharge part, a reactivity control unit and the radiation shielding
ENDF/B-VIII.0 1.00917 4.94E-03 are disposed outside the pressure vessel.
The reactor core internal component is fixed on the side wall of
the pressure vessel, which separates the bottom of the pressure
Table 3 vessel into two concentric cylindrical spaces. Helium flows upward
Sensitivity coefficient of the microscopic cross-section. in the outer space and flows down through the core in the inner
space. The flow path is shown by arrows in Fig. 1. The valve piston
Nuclide ENDF/B-VII.0 ENDF/B-VII.1 ENDF/B-VIII.0
and the power piston move up and down within the space of the
U235 8.88E-05 6.91E-05 6.91E-05
internal components of the core. The valve piston and the series
U238 4.05E-04 2.47E-04 4.05E-04
N14 1.68E-04 1.68E-04 1.68E-04 of resilient structures at the top of the pressure vessel are linked
N15 4.74E-04 4.74E-04 5.03E-04 by a connecting rod which passes through the center of the power
Be9 0.00E + 00 1.34E-03 6.61E-04 piston. There is a gas compression chamber between the power
O16 1.48E-04 8.88E-05 1.41E-03 piston and the gas distribution piston. The fixed coil of the linear
Re185 2.96E-04 3.61E-03 2.20E-03
generator is fixed on the upper part of the pressure vessel, and
Re187 4.54E-04 4.79E-03 2.90E-03
He4 2.76E-04 3.45E-04 3.45E-04 its moving coil is fixed on the top of the power piston and recipro-
B10 2.37E-04 2.37E-04 4.94E-04 cates with the power piston, thereby converting mechanical
B11 3.45E-04 3.45E-04 3.45E-04 energy into electric energy.
The Monte Carlo code RMC (Kan et al., 2009; Liu et al., 2015) is
used to perform the neutronic calculation, which is developed by
The Beijing Institute of Spacecraft Environmental Engineering
the REAL (Reactor Engineering Analysis Laboratory) team in Tsin-
(BISEE) is the first to propose the scheme of a miniature integrated
ghua University. Fig. 2 displays the RMC schematics of ACMIR.
nuclear reactor concept design with gravity independent autono-
The hexagonal core of ACMIR is filled with 61 individual fuel rods
mous circulation (ACMIR) (Zhou et al., 2018.). ACMIR adopts a
(red) consisting of annular pellets of 95 wt% highly enriched UN.
highly integrated structure design, which integrates the reactor
The utilization of HEU fuel is beneficial to make the reactor core
core and power conversion system into the pressure vessel. ACMIR
more compact and achieve smaller volume and weight. Each fuel
is designed to operate for 2–5 years without refueling with 5–100
rod is 30 cm in height with a coolant channel in the center. The
kWe electricity power output, which can be used for a wide range
outer and inner radius of the pellet is 0.88 cm and 0.18 cm, respec-
of space exploration missions by collaborative arrangement.
tively. The cladding of the fuel rod is made of cerium-zirconium
In this paper, the physical scheme design of 5 kWe ACMIR is
alloy, and the inner wall of the cladding is coated with 0.05 cm
presented, and the neutronic characteristics of the reactor core
thick rhenium layer to remain sufficiently subcritical during the
are studied. The remainder of this paper is organized as follows.
drop accident. There is a gas gap between the fuel pellet and the
Section 2 describes the concept of ACMIR. Section 3 performs the
rhenium coating layer. LiH, which is used as moderator, is filled
sensitivity study on nuclear data library. Neutronic characteristics
between the fuel rods. A 3 cm thick BeO reflector is arranged at
studies are introduced in Section 4. Concluding remarks are given
both the upper and lower ends of the fuel rod, respectively. The
in Section 5.
core block is surrounded by axial reflectors composed with BeO,
and six rotation control drums are arranged in the side reflector.
2. ACMIR reactor concept The inner wall of the control drum is coated with two layers of
B4C absorber with a thickness of 0.3 cm
2. The coverage angle
The integrated space nuclear reactor with Stirling engine of the absorber is 120°, and the interlayer of the absorber is Mo-
(ACMIR) (shown in Fig. 1) is mainly composed of the reactor core, 25Re alloy. The reactor core board and the reflector separator are
the pressure vessel, the control drums, axial and radial reflectors, made of SL306 stainless steel.

Fig. 3. Comparison of total microscopic cross-section from different evaluated libraries.

4 J. Li et al. / Annals of Nuclear Energy 142 (2020) 107382

The main parameters of ACMIR core are listed in Table 1. The 3. Sensitivity study on nuclear data library
weights of the main components of ACMIR are also tabulated in
this table. It can be seen that the total weight of ACMIR is about Nuclear data library has an important impact on the accuracy of
538 kg, thus, the specific power is about 37.2 Wt/kg. Monte Carlo neutronic calculation. In this paper, in order to evalu-
ate how cross-section data affect the neutronic analysis, a sensitiv-
ity study on the cross-section data library was performed.
In this part, we adopted the ACE-formatted cross-section data
Table 4
Calculation results of reactor core reactivity. library which is based on different evaluated data libraries (that
is, ENDF/B-VII.0, ENDF/B-VII.1 and ENDF/B-VIII.1 library). The
Core condition keff Reactivity, $
effective multiplication factor of the reactor core is determined
Cold condition, all control drums out 1.01418 ± 0.00030 2.16 with different kinds of libraries and compared with the results
Cold condition, all control drums in 0.95486 ± 0.00027 7.31
obtained with the existing RMC library, which is tabulated in
Hot condition, all control drums out 1.01239 ± 0.00032 1.89
Hot condition, all control drums in 0.94623 ± 0.00028 8.78 Table 2. While in the criticality calculation, we use 300 cycles
and 20,000 neutrons for each cycle and with 30 cycles skipped.
Furthermore, the microscopic cross-section sensitivity coeffi-
cients of the crucial nuclides are calculated (shown in Table 3).
The sensitivity coefficient a is determined as follows:

keff ;1  keff ;0
a¼ ð1Þ
keff ;1

where keff ;0 and keff ;1 are effective multiplication factors calculated

with the existing RMC library and with different kinds of libraries

Fig. 4. Variation of keff upon the depletion time.

Fig. 6. Integral worth of single control drum of ACMIR.

Fig. 5. Reactivity swing upon the motion range of piston.

Table 5
Calculation results of reactivity coefficient (BOL).

Reactivity coefficient Value

Fuel temperature coefficient, pcm/K 5.7457E-03
Reflector temperature coefficient, pcm/K 1.7684E-02
Moderator temperature coefficient, pcm/K 5.3980E-02
Axial expansion coefficient 0.00131
Radial expansion coefficient 0.00299
Fig. 7. Microscopic neutron absorption cross-section of rhenium.
 J. Li et al. / Annals of Nuclear Energy 142 (2020) 107382 5

by adjusting the microscopic cross-section of a single nuclide,
respectively.
As can be seen from the above table, the microscopic cross-
section of O16, Re185 and Re187 have a great influence on the
value of keff. However, the microscopic cross-section of N14,
U235 and other nuclides have little effect on keff.
The energy spectrum of Re185 and U235 from different
evaluated nuclear data libraries (300 K) are shown in Fig. 3.
The microscopic cross-section of Re185 varies greatly in
the unresolved resonance region, resulting in a large sensitivity
coefficient. While, there is little difference in the microscopic
cross-section of U235 from distinct libraries.
5 year’s full power operation, which indicates that ACMIR core
meets the requirement of operating life.
In ACMIR, movement of the gas distribution piston over the
reactor core would cause a reactivity change of the reactor core.
The swing range of keff upon the motion of piston is shown in Fig. 5.
It can be seen from the above figure, the maximum swing range
of the reactivity is 0.21 $, which makes relatively small difference
in the reactivity of the core.
4.2. Reactivity coefficients

Reactivity feedback is an important issue in the safety of ACMIR.

The reactivity coefficients of ACMIR include the reactivity temper-
4. Neutronic characteristics study of ACMIR core
ature coefficient of fuel, reflector and moderator, as well as thermal
expansion coefficient, etc. The calculated reactivity coefficient of
4.1. Reactivity of the core
ACMIR in the initial and cold condition are tabulated in Table 5.
As can be seen from the table, the reactivity coefficients are
The effective multiplication factor (keff) of the core at cold
negative, which indicates the inherent safety characteristics of
(300 K) and hot (900 K) operating conditions are evaluated, respec-
ACMIR core. The changes of reactivity coefficients upon tempera-
tively. The effective delayed neutron friction (beff ) of the reactor
ture are caused by Doppler broadening and thermal expansion
core is 0.00647 (equal to 1 $), thus, the reactivity (q) can be deter-
effect.
mined as follows:

keff  1
qð$Þ ¼ =beff ð2Þ
keff

The calculated keff results are listed in Table 4. In this table, con-
trol drums ‘‘out” refers to the surface of B4C absorber facing out of
the core and ‘‘in” refers to facing the core.
From the above table, it can be seen that ACMIR core is designed
to have a 2.16 $ excess reactivity and a 7.31 $ sub-criticality at
cold clean shutdown condition. The reactivity in the hot operation
condition is less than the cold condition, which is mainly affected
by the Doppler broadening effect of the fuel and the thermal
expansion of the core.
The burnup calculation of the reactor core is performed in this
section. While in the burnup calculation, we utilize 200 cycles
and 10,000 neutrons for each cycle and with 30 cycles skipped.
The variation of keff versus burnup time is shown in Fig. 4. It can
be seen that the reactivity changes of ACMIR core are nearly linear
at the thermal power level of 20 kWt. The final keff is 1.0076 after a Fig. 8. Neutron spectrum of ACMIR core under different conditions.

Table 6
Criticality calculation results during drop accident.

Reactor state keff Reactivity, $

1. Reflector intact, flooded in wet sand, seawater into the core 0.98379 2.55
2. Reflector intact, flooded in wet sand, seawater not into the core 0.97745 3.57
3. Reflector intact, flooded in wet sand, wet sand into the core 0.98052 3.07
4. Reflector intact, flooded in seawater, seawater into the core 0.97578 3.84
5. Reflector intact, flooded in seawater, seawater not in the core 0.96912 4.92
6. Reflector intact, flooded in seawater, wet sand into the core 0.97197 4.46
7. Reflector intact, vacuum out of the core, freshwater into the core 0.96153 6.18
8. Reflector intact, vacuum out of the core, freshwater not into the core 0.95486 7.31
9. Reflector intact, flooded in dry sand, freshwater into the core 0.99094 1.41
10. Reflector intact, flooded in dry sand, freshwater not into the core 0.98895 1.73
11. Reflector falls out, flooded in wet sand, seawater into the core 0.98724 2.00
12. Reflector falls out, flooded in wet sand, seawater not into the core 0.98094 3.00
13. Reflector falls out, flooded in wet sand, wet sand into the core 0.98402 2.51
14. Reflector falls out, flooded in seawater, seawater into the core 0.93314 11.07
15. Reflector falls out, flooded in seawater, seawater not in the core 0.92741 12.10
16. Reflector falls out, flooded in seawater, wet sand into the core 0.92989 11.65
17. Reflector falls out, vacuum out of the core, freshwater into the core 0.91994 13.45
18. Reflector falls out, vacuum out of the core, freshwater not into the core 0.91282 14.76
19. Reflector falls out, flooded in dry sand, freshwater into the core 0.94569 8.88
20. Reflector falls out, flooded in dry sand, freshwater not into the core 0.93875 10.08
6 J. Li et al. / Annals of Nuclear Energy 142 (2020) 107382
4.3. Control drum worth
In the design of ACMIR, in order to ensure that the control drum
has sufficient reactivity control capability, the reactor is required to
have a subcritical depth of more than 1 $ even when one control
drum fails. In the condition of one control drum fails and other
drums in, keff = 0.94623 ± 0.00028. The corresponding reactivity
of the core is 5.44 $, which satisfies the design requirement.
During the launch period, all the control drums are in. When the
reactor is sent to a predetermined orbit or planet surface, the con-
trol drums begin to rotate outward. In order to avoid significant
Fig. 9. Axial neutron flux distribution of ACMIR core.
Fig. 10. Three-group radial neutron flux distribution of ACMIR core.
abnormal power distribution in the radial direction of the reactor
core, each control drum should rotate with the same angle during
operation. This change in reactivity introduced by the rotation of
the control drum at a certain angle is referred as the integral worth.
The integral worth upon the rotation angle is shown in Fig. 6.
As can be seen from the above figure, during the rotation of the
control drum, the integral worth approximately changes linearly
with the rotation angle. The result shows the integral worth of
ACMIR’s one single control drum is 1125 pcm, which is similar to
the value of ISR’s single control drum (1400 pcm) (Muhammad
et al., 2020). The efficiency of the control drum is slightly reduced
in the range of 0° to 40° and 140° to 180°.
4.4. Safety analyses of drop accident
Space nuclear reactors are designed to remain subcritical when
launching. When the space nuclear reactor fails to launch, follow-
ing a drop accident, the reactor core may be submersed in wet or
dry sand, flooded with seawater or freshwater. Thus, it will result
in a moderated neutron spectrum and an increase in reactivity.
Effective measures need to be taken to alleviate the consequences
of the launch accident, such as adding spectral shift absorbers
(SSAs) to the core, utilization of safety control rod and other neu-
tron absorber materials. Therein, SSAs have relatively small neu-
tron absorption cross-section in the fast spectrum and large
absorption cross-section in the thermal regions. In ACMIR, a thin
rhenium layer is coated in the inner surface of the fuel rod clad-
ding, and the Mo-25Re alloy is used as structural material, which
are beneficial in the scenario of drop accident. Fig. 7 shows the
 J. Li et al. / Annals of Nuclear Energy 142 (2020) 107382
microscopic neutron absorption cross-section of rhenium, which is
based on ENDF/B-VIII.0 library (Brown et al., 2018).
The criticality results of drop accident scenarios (all control
drums out) are calculated (as shown in Table 6). In these scenarios,
the reactor is submerged in sand and flooded in water, and super-
imposed the conditions of reflectors falling off.
As can be seen in the above table, even in the most severe acci-
dent conditions (reflector intact, flooded in dry sand, freshwater
into the core), the reactor also has a subcritical margin of more
than 1.4 $ to meet the critical safety requirements during a drop
accident.
The neutron spectrum of the reactor core during normal opera-
tion and drop accident (NO. 1 and NO. 11 in Table 6) are displayed
in Fig. 8, respectively.
The above table shows that, during normal operation, the reac-
tor core exhibits as typical fast neutron spectrum, which is mainly
due to the application of the HEU fuel. In a submerged condition,
however, the neutron spectrum is significantly thermal. As for
the condition without the radial reflector, the neutron spectrum
is more thermalized.
4.5. Neutron flux and power distribution
The axial neutron flux distribution of the core is shown in Fig. 9.
As can be seen from the above figure, the neutron flux of the
core is dominated by fast neutron. The maximum neutron flux in
Fig. 11. Radial power distribution of ACMIR core.
7
the axial direction is in the center of the core and gradually
decreases from the center to both sides.
Fig. 10 shows the radial three-group neutron flux distribution at
begin of life (BOL). In this figure, the fast neutron flux is largest at
the center of the core, and gradually decreases from the center to
the periphery. The distribution of thermal and epithermal neutron
flux is similar. However, due to the scattering effect of the BeO
reflector and the moderating effect of LiH, the thermal and epither-
mal neutron flux increases slightly on the periphery of the core.
The total fission deposition energy of each fuel cell is calculated
by RMC, and the power profile of the reactor core is obtained. The
radial power distribution factor is defined as the ratio of the power
density of each fuel cell in the radial of the core to the value of the
central fuel cell. During normal operation with all the control
drums out, the radial distribution of the power factor is shown in
Fig. 11.
The figure shows that the reactor core has a relatively smooth
power distribution, and the minimum value of the radial power
factor is 0.7929. The control drums show limited effects on the
power profile in the center of the core. Instead, they only affect
the region of the adjacent control drums. When all the control
drums are in, the minimum value of the power distribution factor
is 0.6394.
During normal operation, the reactor core is subdivided into 50
layers in the axial direction, and the total fission energy deposition
of each layer is obtained by RMC as well. The normalized power
distribution of the core in the axial direction is shown in Fig. 12.
8 J. Li et al. / Annals of Nuclear Energy 142 (2020) 107382
Fig. 12. Axial power distribution of ACMIR core.
In the above figure, the core power is symmetrically distributed
in the axial direction, decreasing from the center to both ends, and
the power density reaches the maximum value (the peak value is
1.29) at the center of the core.
5. Conclusions
This paper presents the physical conceptual design of a 5 kWe
integrated space nuclear reactor with Stirling engine (ACMIR). At
first, the compact and reliable design concept of the reactor core
is introduced. The neutronic characteristics analyses of ACMIR is
conducted as well. Results obtained from the paper lay the founda-
tion for the future detailed physical and thermal-hydraulic cou-
pling calculation, non-nuclear prototype development and testing.
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Jian Li: Conceptualization, Methodology, Software, Writing -
original draft. Qin Zhou: Methodology. Jian Mou: Visualization.
Ruiqiong Zhai: Writing - original draft. Boying Lin: Investigation.
Yan Xia: Writing - review & editing.
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing finan-
cial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared
to influence the work reported in this paper.
Appendix A. Supplementary data
Supplementary data to this article can be found online at
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.anucene.2020.107382.
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