Plutonium recycling in hydride fueled PWR cores

The classic approach to the recycling of Pu in PWR is to use mixed U-oxide Pu-oxide (MOX) fuel. The mono-recycling of plutonium in PWR transmutes less than 30% of the loaded plutonium, providing only a limited reduction in the long-term radiotoxicity and in the inventory of TRU to be stored in the repository. The primary objective of this study is to assess the feasibility of plutonium recycling in PWR in the form of plutonium hydride, PuH₂, mixed with uranium and zirconium hydride, ZrH_1.6, referred to as PUZH, that is loaded uniformly in each fuel rod. The assessment is performed by comparing the performance of the PUZH fueled core to that of the MOX fueled core. Performance characteristics examined are transmutation effectiveness, proliferation resistance of the discharged fuel and fuel cycle economics. The PUZH loaded core is found superior to the MOX fueled core in terms of the transmutation effectiveness and proliferation resistance. For the reference cycle duration and reference fuel rod diameter and pitch, the percentage of the plutonium loaded that is transmuted in one recycle is 53% for PUZH versus 29% for MOX fuel. That is, the net amount of plutonium transmuted in the first recycle is 55% higher in cores using PUZH than in cores using MOX fuel. Relative to the discharged MOX, the discharged PUZH fuel has smaller fissile plutonium fraction - 45% versus 60%, 15% smaller minor actinides (MA) inventory and more than double spontaneous fission neutron source intensity and decay heat per gram of discharged TRU. Relative to the MOX fuel assembly, the radioactivity of the PUZH fuel assembly is 26% smaller and the decay heat and the neutron yield are only 3% larger. The net effect is that the handling of the discharged PUZH fuel assembly will be comparable in difficulty to that of the discharged MOX assembly while the proliferation resistance of the TRU of the discharged PUZH fuel is enhanced.     

IAEA GT-MHR benchmark calculations by using the HELIOS/MASTER physics analysis procedure and the MCNP Monte Carlo code

The IAEA's gas-cooled reactor program has coordinated international cooperation for an evaluation of a high temperature gas-cooled reactor's performance, which includes a validation of the physics analysis codes and the performance models for the proposed GT-MHR. This benchmark problem consists of the pin and block calculations and the reactor physics of the control rod worth for the GT-MHR with a weapon grade plutonium fuel. Benchmark analysis has been performed by using the HELIOS/MASTER deterministic code package and the MCNP Monte Carlo code. The deterministic code package adopts a conventional 2-step procedure in which a few group constants are generated by a transport lattice calculation, and the reactor physics analysis is performed by a 3-dimensional diffusion calculation.In order to solve particular modeling issues in GT-MHR, recently developed technologies were utilized and new analysis procedure was devised. Double heterogeneity effect could be covered by using the reactivity-equivalent physical transformation (RPT) method. Strong core–reflector interaction could be resolved by applying an equivalence theory to the generation of the reflector cross sections. In order to accurately handle with very large control rods which are asymmetrically located in a fuel and a reflector block, the surface dependent discontinuity factors (SDFs) were considered in applying an equivalence theory. A new method has been devised to consider SDFs without any modification of the nodal solver in MASTER.All computational results of the HELIOS/MASTER code package were compared with those of MCNP. The multiplication factors of HELIOS for the pin cells are in very good agreement with those of MCNP to within a maximum error of 693 pcm Δρ. The maximum differences of the multiplication factors for the fuel blocks are about 457 pcm Δρ and the control rod worths of HELIOS are consistent with those of MCNP to within a maximum error of 3.09%. On considering a SDF in the core calculations, the maximum differences of the control rod worths are significantly decreased to be 7.7% from 21.5%. It is showed that there are good consistencies between the deterministic code package and the Monte Carlo code from the results of these benchmark calculations. Therefore, the HELIOS/MASTER 2-step procedure can be used as a standard reactor physics analysis tool for a prismatic VHTR.     

DRAGON&DONJON程序在MSR中堆芯燃耗计算的适用性

DRAGONDONJON组件-堆芯"两步法"程序通过合理简化,理论可适用于任何堆芯与工况。使用蒙特卡罗方法 RMC(Reactor Monte Carlo code)、MCNP(Monte Carlo Neutron Particle transport code)程序验证DRADON程序是否能够承担快/热谱型熔盐堆(Molten Salt Reactor,MSR)焚烧TRU、Th U燃料燃耗计算。选出熔盐增殖堆(Molten Salt Breeder Reactor,MSBR)与熔盐锕系元素再循环和嬗变堆(Molten Salt Advanced Reactor Transmuter,MOSART)堆型进行比较,同时分别利用RMC程序验证DRAGON程序组件燃耗计算的准确性,利用MCNP程序验证DRAGON程序组件均匀化方法以及DONJON程序截面调用和程序全堆扩散的准确性。结果表明,组件燃耗计算中,TRU和Th U燃料满足燃耗计算要求;堆芯临界计算中,快/热谱堆芯计算误差均小于0.001。证明DRADON程序可以胜任快、热谱型MSR焚烧TRU、Th U燃料的物理计算任务。     

环形燃料超临界水冷堆中子学计算方法研究

基于先进组件程序HELIOS和堆芯节块法程序SIXTUS,研发了超临界水冷堆（SCWR）的中子学计算程序FENNEL-N,并通过与蒙特卡罗程序对比分析了其用于环形燃料超临界水冷堆计算的精度。组件验证结果表明：制作多群数据库的压水堆能谱与超临界水冷堆能谱的差异是导致计算误差的主要原因。堆芯验证结果表明：传统的组件均匀化方法在计算超临界水冷堆时会引入较大误差。应用FENNEL-N程序对组件均匀化方法进行了研究,结果表明,采用优化的组件参数少群结构能减少堆芯能谱变化对精度的影响,采用超组件模型计算组件参数可考虑反射层对组件参数的影响。采用新的组件均匀化方法后,FENNEL-N的计算精度满足了预概念设计需求。     

New Sampling Method in Continuous Energy Monte Carlo Calculation for Pebble Bed Reactors

A pebble bed reactor generally has double heterogeneity consisting of two kinds of spherical fuel element. In the core, there exist many fuel balls piled up randomly in a high packing fraction. And each fuel ball contains a lot of small fuel particles which are also distributed randomly. In this study, to realize precise neutron transport calculation of such reactors with the continuous energy Monte Carlo method, a new sampling method has been developed. The new method has been implemented in the general purpose Monte Carlo code MCNP to develop a modified version MCNP-BALL. This method was validated by calculating inventory of spherical fuel elements arranged successively by sampling during transport calculation and also by performing criticality calculations in ordered packing models. From the results, it was confirmed that the inventory of spherical fuel elements could be reproduced using MCNP-BALL within a sufficient accuracy of 0.2%. And the comparison of criticality calculations in ordered packing models between MCNP-BALL and the reference method shows excellent agreement in neutron spectrum as well as multiplication factor.

MCNP-BALL enables us to analyze pebble bed type cores such as PROTEUS precisely with the continuous energy Monte Carlo method.     

Analysis of Mixed Oxide Fuel Critical Experiments with Neutronics ANalysis Codes for Boiling Water Reactors

Critical experiments of UO₂ and full mixed oxide (MOX) fuel cores conducted at the Tank-type Critical Assembly (TCA) were aNalyzed using BWR design-purpose codes HINES and CERES with ENDF/B files and Monte Carlo fine analysis codes VMONT and MVP with the JENDL-3.2 library.

The averaged values of the multiplication factors calculated with HINES/CERES, VMONT and MVP agreed with those of experiments within 0.3%ΔAk. The values by the design-purpose codes showed a small difference of 0.1%Δk between UO₂ and MOX cores. Monte Carlo code results showed that the JENDL-3.2 library had a tendency to overestimate the multiplication factors of UO₂ cores by about 0.3%Δk compared with those values of MOX cores. The root mean square errors of calculated power distributions were less than 1% for HINES/CERES and VMONT.

These results showed that (1) the accuracy of these codes when applied to full MOX cores was almost the same as their accuracy for UO₂ cores, which confirmed the accuracy of present core design codes for full MOX cores; and (2) the accuracy of the 190-energy-group Monte Carlo calculation code VMONT was almost the same as that of the continuous-energy Monte Carlo calculation code MVP.     

Development of a physics analysis procedure for the prismatic very high temperature gas-cooled reactors

A new physics analysis procedure has been developed for a prismatic very high temperature gas-cooled reactor based on a conventional two-step procedure for the PWR physics analysis. The HELIOS and MASTER codes were employed to generate the coarse group cross sections through a transport lattice calculation, and to perform the 3-dimensional core physics analysis by a nodal diffusion calculation, respectively. Physics analysis of the prismatic VHTRs involves particular modeling issues such as a double heterogeneity of the coated fuel particles, a neutron streaming in the coolant channels, a strong core-reflector interaction, and large spectrum shifts due to changes of the surrounding environment and state parameters. Double heterogeneity effect was considered by using a recently developed reactivity-equivalent physical transformation method. Neutron streaming effect was quantified through 3-dimensional Monte Carlo transport calculations by using the MCNP code. Strong core-reflector interaction could be handled by applying an equivalence theory to the generation of the reflector cross sections. The effects of a spectrum shift could be covered by optimizing the coarse energy group structure. A two-step analysis procedure was established for the prismatic VHTR physics analysis by combining all the methodologies described above. The applicability of our code system was tested against core benchmark problems. The results of these benchmark tests show that our code system is very accurate and practical for a prismatic VHTR physics analysis.     

Development of a computer code system for the analysis of prism and pebble type VHTR cores

Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute (KAERI) is developing a new computer code system for an analysis of very high temperature gas-cooled reactor (VHTR) cores based on the existing HELIOS/MASTER code system. Several methodologies were developed in order for the original light water reactor (LWR) code system to treat the unique VHTR characteristics easily such as the so-called double-heterogeneity problem, the effects of a spectrum shift and a thermal up-scattering, a strong fuel/reflector interaction, etc. The method of a reactivity-equivalent physical transformation (RPT) and the equivalent cylindrical fuel (ECF) model are proposed to transform the double-heterogeneous fuel problem into a single-heterogeneous one in a cylindrical coordinate for both a prismatic fuel and a pebble-bed fuel. An eight energy group structure with appropriate group boundaries has been constructed in the MASTER diffusion nodal calculation, within which the issues of a spectrum shift and a thermal up-scattering are resolved. The concern about a strong fuel/reflector interaction can be handled easily by applying the equivalence theory to a simple one-dimensional spectral geometry consisting of the fuel and reflector regions. By combining all the methodologies described above, a well-known two-step core analysis procedure has been established, where HELIOS is used for the transport lattice calculation and MASTER for the 3-D diffusion nodal core calculation. The applicability of our code system was tested against several core benchmark problems. The results of these benchmark tests revealed that our code system is very accurate and practical for an analysis of both the prismatic and pebble-bed reactor cores.     

Simplified two and three dimensional HTTR benchmark problems

To assess the accuracy of diffusion or transport methods for reactor calculations, it is desirable to create heterogeneous benchmark problems that are typical of whole core configurations. In this paper we have created two and three dimensional numerical benchmark problems typical of high temperature gas cooled prismatic cores. Additionally, a single cell and single block benchmark problems are also included. These problems were derived from the HTTR start-up experiment. Since the primary utility of the benchmark problems is in code-to-code verification, minor details regarding geometry and material specification of the original experiment have been simplified while retaining the heterogeneity and the major physics properties of the core from a neutronics viewpoint. A six-group material (macroscopic) cross section library has been generated for the benchmark problems using the lattice depletion code HELIOS. Using this library, Monte Carlo solutions are presented for three configurations (all-rods-in, partially-controlled and all-rods-out) for both the 2D and 3D problems. These solutions include the core eigenvalues, the block (assembly) averaged fission densities, local peaking factors, the absorption densities in the burnable poison and control rods, and pin fission density distribution for selected blocks. Also included are the solutions for the single cell and single block problems.     

Development of a practical Monte Carlo based fuel management system for the Penn State University Breazeale Research Reactor (PSBR)

A practical fuel management system for the he Pennsylvania State University Breazeale Research Reactor (PSBR) based on the advanced Monte Carlo methodology was developed from the existing fuel management tool in this research. Several modeling improvements were implemented to the old system. The improved fuel management system can now utilize the burnup dependent cross section libraries generated specifically for PSBR fuel and it is also able to update the cross sections of these libraries by the Monte Carlo calculation automatically. Considerations were given to balance the computation time and the accuracy of the cross section update. Thus, certain types of a limited number of isotopes, which are considered “important”, are calculated and updated by the scheme. Moreover, the depletion algorithm of the existing fuel management tool was replaced from the predictor only to the predictor-corrector depletion scheme to account for burnup spectrum changes during the burnup step more accurately. An intermediate verification of the fuel management system was performed to assess the correctness of the newly implemented schemes against HELIOS. It was found that the agreement of both codes is good when the same energy released per fission (Q values) is used. Furthermore, to be able to model the reactor at various temperatures, the fuel management tool is able to utilize automatically the continuous cross sections generated at different temperatures. Other additional useful capabilities were also added to the fuel management tool to make it easy to use and be practical. As part of the development, a hybrid nodal diffusion/Monte Carlo calculation was devised to speed up the Monte Carlo calculation by providing more converged initial source distribution for the Monte Carlo calculation from the nodal diffusion calculation. Finally, the fuel management system was validated against the measured data using several actual PSBR core loadings. The agreement of the predicted core excess reactivities and the measured values is found to be good considering the measurement uncertainties.     

基于蒙特卡罗方法的IVR熔融池内热源时序模型构建及分析

堆内熔融物滞留（IVR）作为反应堆严重事故的关键缓解策略,目前已广泛应用于新一代压水堆（PWR）。针对IVR的有效性,如熔融池内对流、下封头传热、壁面临界热流密度（CHF）的估算等研究,是该领域数年来的热点。针对上述问题,国内外先后开展了数起实验,如COPO、BALI、SEMICO、COPRA等,并基于实验结果展开了大量数值模拟,以探索IVR下的传热规律,为其性能及设计提供参照。本文基于中子物理蒙特卡罗程序RMC对压力容器下封头熔融池模型进行了细网格建模及材料填充,并通过燃耗/衰变热计算DEPTH程序构建了熔融池内热源时序模型。研究结果显示,该模型能体现熔融池内热源变化趋势,得到的时序数据对IVR的进一步研究有重要意义。     

Comparison among MCNP-based depletion codes applied to burnup calculations of pebble-bed HTR lattices

The double-heterogeneity characterising pebble-bed high temperature reactors (HTRs) makes Monte Carlo based calculation tools the most suitable for detailed core analyses. These codes can be successfully used to predict the isotopic evolution during irradiation of the fuel of this kind of cores. At the moment, there are many computational systems based on MCNP that are available for performing depletion calculation. All these systems use MCNP to supply problem dependent fluxes and/or microscopic cross sections to the depletion module. This latter then calculates the isotopic evolution of the fuel resolving Bateman's equations.In this paper, a comparative analysis of three different MCNP-based depletion codes is performed: Montburns2.0, MCNPX2.6.0 and BGCore. Monteburns code can be considered as the reference code for HTR calculations, since it has been already verified during HTR-N and HTR-N1 EU project. All calculations have been performed on a reference model representing an infinite lattice of thorium-plutonium fuelled pebbles. The evolution of k-inf as a function of burnup has been compared, as well as the inventory of the important actinides.The k-inf comparison among the codes shows a good agreement during the entire burnup history with the maximum difference lower than 1%. The actinide inventory prediction agrees well. However significant discrepancy in Am and Cm concentrations calculated by MCNPX as compared to those of Monteburns and BGCore has been observed. This is mainly due to different Am-241 (n,γ) branching ratio utilized by the codes.The important advantage of BGCore is its significantly lower execution time required to perform considered depletion calculations. While providing reasonably accurate results BGCore runs depletion problem about two times faster than Monteburns and two to five times faster than MCNPX.     

Shutdown dose rate calculation code system and its application to EAST tokamak

For safe operation and maintenance of nuclear devices, it is very important to predict the dose rate distribution after shutdown. Based on the rigorous two-step (R2S) method, a new shutdown dose rate calculation code system was developed for nuclear devices with large dimension and complex geometries. By coupling the Monte Carlo particle transport calculation code MCNP with the activation simulation code FISPACT, the dose rate calculation codes integrate the functions of neutron transport calculation, activation calculation and decay gamma transport calculation. This code system was applied to the shutdown dose analysis for experimental advanced superconducting tokamak (EAST). Three-dimensional dose rate distributions of the EAST for different cooling times and spatial locations were obtained. The results can be used to assist radiation protection in EAST.     

MCOR – Monte Carlo depletion code for reference LWR calculations

The MCOR (MCnp-kORigen) code system is a Monte Carlo based depletion system for reference fuel assembly and core calculations. The MCOR code is designed as an interfacing code that provides depletion capability to the LANL Monte Carlo code by coupling two codes: MCNP5 with the AREVA NP depletion code, KORIGEN. The physical quality of both codes is unchanged.     

Validation of IRBURN calculation code system through burnup benchmark analysis

Assessment of the reactor fuel composition during the irradiation time, fuel management and criticality safety analysis require the utilization of a validated burnup calculation code system. In this work a newly developed burnup calculation code system, IRBURN, is introduced for the estimation and analysis of the fuel burnup in LWR reactors. IRBURN provides the full capabilities of the Monte Carlo neutron and photon transport code MCNP4C as well as the versatile code for calculating the buildup and decay of nuclides in nuclear materials, ORIGEN2.1, along with other data processing and linking subroutines. This code has the capability of using different depletion calculation schemes.     

Development of analysis method for sodium void reactivity of step type FBR cores by using group-wise Monte Carlo code

A new method is proposed to separate the sodium void reactivity of step type FBR cores to components including non-leakage terms and a leakage term by using a newly developed perturbation code MCPERT where fluxes and adjoint fluxes are derived from a group-wise Monte Carlo code. The step type FBR core is a core where the height of the inner core is smaller than that of the outer core and a large sodium plenum region is located above the core so as to decrease the sodium void reactivity. The conventional diffusion perturbation method cannot treat such a large void region due to the diffusion approximation, while the Monte Carlo code can treat it exactly. In this study, a group-wise Monte Carlo code GMVP with a 70-group constant set JFS-3-J3.3 is employed to evaluate the neutron fluxes and adjoint fluxes which are used as inputs to the MCPERT code to evaluate the non-leakage terms. The leakage term is derived from the difference of the total sodium void reactivity evaluated by the direct calculation of GMVP and the summation of the non-leakage terms. It is found that the proposed method can provide the result approximately consistent to the ratio of the reactivity components derived from the conventional method.     

Analysis of core physics experiments on irradiated BWR MOX fuel in the REBUS program

Critical experiments were performed in the REBUS program on a core loaded with a test bundle including 16 irradiated BWR-type MOX rods of average burnup of 61 GWd/t. The experimental data were analyzed using diffusion, transport, and continuous-energy Monte Carlo calculation codes coupled with nuclear data libraries based on JENDL-3.2 or JENDL-3.3. Biases in effective multiplication factors of the critical cores were ?1.0%Δk for the diffusion calculations (JENDL-3.2), ?0.3%Δk for the transport calculations (JENDL-3.3), and 0.2%Δk for the Monte Carlo calculations (JENDL-3.2). The measured core fission rate and co-activation rate distributions were generally well reproduced using the three types of calculations. The burnup reactivity determined using the measured water level reactivity coefficients was ?2.41 ± 0.08%Δk/kk’, which also agreed with the results of the three type of calculations within the measurement and calculation errors. The most probable isotopic inventories in the irradiated MOX rods was tentatively obtained by using the ratios of the calculation to chemical assay data on a pellet sample, and the burnup reactivity was reanalyzed to split the calculation error into those due to the inventory and reactivity calculations. This approach showed that the inventory calculation error compensated the reactivity calculation error.     

基于蒙特卡罗方法与指数欧拉法耦合的反应堆三维燃耗计算程序的研发

燃耗计算在反应堆设计、分析研究中起着重要作用.一维、二维耦合燃耗程序因其几何限制难以满足先进反应堆精细设计分析的要求.本文研发了基于蒙特卡罗方法与指数欧拉法耦合的三维燃耗程序.程序采用编写耦合MCNP与FISPACT的接口程序的方法,结合了MCNP处理复杂几何能力强,FISPACT计算核素全面、能谱多样的特点,实现了考...     

Propagation of statistical and nuclear data uncertainties in Monte Carlo burn-up calculations

Two methodologies to propagate the uncertainties on the nuclide inventory in combined Monte Carlo-spectrum and burn-up calculations are presented, based on sensitivity/uncertainty and random sampling techniques (uncertainty Monte Carlo method). Both enable the assessment of the impact of uncertainties in the nuclear data as well as uncertainties due to the statistical nature of the Monte Carlo neutron transport calculation. The methodologies are implemented in our MCNP–ACAB system, which combines the neutron transport code MCNP-4C and the inventory code ACAB.     

Thermal-fluid characteristics of the transuranics fuel in a deep-burn HTR core

The Deep Burn Project is evaluating the feasibility of the DB-HTR (Deep Burn High Temperature Reactor) to achieve a very high utilization of transuranics (TRU) derived from the recycle of LWR spent fuel. This study intends to evaluate the thermal-fluid and safety characteristics of TRU fuel in a DB-HTR core using GAMMA+ code. The key design characteristics of the DB-HTR core are more fuel rings (five fuel-rings), less central reflectors (three rings) and decay power curves due to the TRU fuel compositions that are different from the UO₂ fuel. This study considered three types of TRU kernel compositions such as 100%(PuO₂ + NpO₂ + Am), 99.8%(PuO_1.8, NpO₂) + 0.2%UO₂ + 0.6 mole SiC getter, and 70%(PuO_1.8, NpO₂) + 30%UO₂ + 0.6 mole SiC getter. The first fuel type of TRU kernel produces higher decay power than the UO₂ kernel. For the second and the third fuel types, removing the initial Am isotopes and reducing the volumetric packing fraction of TRISO particles will reduce the decay power. The flow distribution, core temperature and TRISO temperature profiles at the steady state were examined. As a safety performance, this study mainly evaluated the peak fuel temperature during LPCC (low pressure conduction cooling) event with considering the impact of decay power, the annealing effect of the irradiated thermal conductivity of graphite, and the impact of the FB (fuel block) end-flux-peaking. For the 600 MW_th DB-HTR core, the peak fuel temperature of 100%(PuO₂ + NpO₂ + Am) TRU was found to be much higher than the transient fuel design limit of 1600 °C due to the lack of heat absorber volume in the central reflector as well as to the increased decay power of the TRU fuel compositions. For a 0.2%UO₂ mixed or a 30%UO₂ mixed TRU, the peak fuel temperature was decreased due to the reduced decay power, however, it was still higher than 1600 °C due to the lack of heat absorber volume in the central reflector.