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• The mechanical friction force during the control rod drop is treated as a time-variant uncertainty for uncertainty analysis; • The interval process model is used to describe the time-variant uncertain mechanical friction during the CR drop; • The uncertainty analysis of CR drop considering various uncertain parameters is conducted; • A novel and general computational framework for uncertainty analysis of CR drop, UA-CRD, is proposed. Due to the influence of multiple factors, the control rod drop involves some uncertain parameters. The mechanical friction on the control rod is a time-variant uncertain parameter and is related to the position of the control rod. For the first time, this paper adopts the interval process model, which accurately describes the uncertainty parameters by using small-scale samples, to describe the uncertain mechanical friction on the control rod. The numerical experimental results demonstrate that the interval process model can describe the mechanical friction with high accuracy, even when employing small-scale samples. Furthermore, it is found that the uncertainty analysis can be considered as solving the extremal problem of a black-box model. Based on it, we propose a novel and general calculation framework for uncertainty analysis of control rod drop, UA-CRD. Through the analysis of numerical examples, it is verified that UA-CRD can accurately and efficiently conduct the uncertainty analysis of control rod drop. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]