Nuclear Engineering and Technology

Korean Nuclear Society (한국원자력학회)
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Development and verification of a Monte Carlo two-step method for lead-based fast reactor neutronics analysis

  • Yiwei Wu (School of Nuclear Science and Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University) ;
  • Qufei Song (School of Nuclear Science and Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University) ;
  • Ruixiang Wang (School of Nuclear Science and Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University) ;
  • Yao Xiao (School of Nuclear Science and Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University) ;
  • Hanyang Gu (School of Nuclear Science and Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University) ;
  • Hui Guo (School of Nuclear Science and Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University)
  • Received : 2022.10.19
  • Accepted : 2023.03.04
  • Published : 2023.06.25
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Abstract

With the rise of economic and safety standards for nuclear reactors, new concepts of Gen-IV reactors and modular reactors showed more complex designs that challenge current tools for reactor physics analysis. A Monte Carlo (MC) two-step method was proposed in this work. This calculation scheme uses the continuous-energy MC method to generate multi-group cross-sections from heterogeneous models. The multi-group MC method, which can adapt locally-heterogeneous models, is used in the core calculation step. This calculation scheme is verified using a Gen-IV modular lead-based fast reactor (LFR) benchmark case. The influence of homogenized patterns, scatter approximations, flux separable approximation, and local heterogeneity in core calculation on simulation results are investigated. Results showed that the cross-sections generated using the 3D assembly model with a locally heterogeneous representation of control rods lead to an accurate estimation with less than 270 pcm bias in core reactivity, 0.5% bias in control rod worth, and 1.5% bias on power distribution. The study verified the applicability of multi-group cross-sections generated with the MC method for LFR analysis. The study also proved the feasibility of multi-group MC in core calculation with local heterogeneity, which saves 85% time compared to the continuous-energy MC.

Keywords

Acknowledgement

This study is sponsored by National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 12105170, 12135008), Science and Technology on Reactor System Design Technology Laboratory and the Shanghai Sailing Program (No. 20YF1420700). The computations in this paper were run on the π-2.0 cluster supported by the Center for High-Performance Computing at Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

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