Neutronic Analysis of the KRUSTY Space Microreactor

Space microreactors are possibly the only option capable of providing reliable power to the future colonies on the Moon or Mars or to electric space propulsion systems.A concept with a lot of literature is the KRUSTY reactor designed and tested by Los Alamos National Laboratories.As part of a wider project on space microreactors at Paul Scherrer Institute, and in preparation for further extended studies, the core and shielding's neutronic analysis of the KRUSTY reactor was performed using Serpent, which showed good agreement with the data published by Los Alamos.This work was limited to the "hot" reactor condition used in the KRUSTY reports, where all components are at 300K.