Nuclear Engineering and Technology

Korean Nuclear Society (한국원자력학회)
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Multigroup cross-sections generated using Monte-Carlo method with flux-moment homogenization technique for fast reactor 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) ;
  • Kuaiyuan Feng (School of Nuclear Science and Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University) ;
  • Jean-Francois Vidal (CEA, DES/IRESNE/DER/SPRC/LEPh) ;
  • 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 : 2023.01.19
  • Accepted : 2023.04.08
  • Published : 2023.07.25
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Abstract

The development of fast reactors with complex designs and operation status requires more accurate and effective simulation. The Monte-Carlo method can generate multi-group cross-sections in arbitrary geometry without approximation on resonances treatment and leads to good results in combination with diffusion codes. However, in previous studies, the coupling of Monte-Carlo generated multi-group cross-sections (MC-MGXS) and transport solvers has shown relatively large biases in fast reactor problems. In this paper, the main contribution to the biases is proved to be the neglect of the angle-dependence of the total cross-sections. The flux-moment homogenization technique (MHT) is proposed to take into account this dependence. In this method, the angular dependence is attributed to the transfer cross-sections, keeping an independent form for the total sections. For the MET-1000 benchmark, the multi-group transport simulation results with MC-MGXS generated with MHT are improved by 700 pcm and an additional 120 pcm with higher order scattering. The factors that cause the residual bias are discussed. The core power distribution bias is also significantly reduced when MHT is used. It proves that the MCMGXS with MHT can be applicable with transport solvers in fast reactor analysis.

Keywords

Acknowledgement

This study is sponsored by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 12105170, 12135008). 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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