Distributed resonance self-shielding using the equivalence principle
- Atomic Energy of Canada Limited, Chalk River Laboratories, Chalk River, ON K0J 1J0 (Canada)
This paper presents an extension of the equivalence principle to allow distributed resonance self-shielding in a multi-region fuel configuration. Rational expansion of fuel-to-fuel collision probability is applied in order to establish equivalence between the actual fuel configuration and a homogeneous mixture of hydrogen and resonant absorber, which is a commonly used model to calculate library tables of resonance integrals. The main steps in derivation are given along with the basic physics assumptions on which the presented approach relies. The method has been implemented in the lattice code WIMS-AECL and routinely used for calculation of CANDU-type reactor lattices. Its capabilities are illustrated by comparison of WIMS-AECL and MCNP results of {sup 238}U resonance capture in a CANDU lattice cell. In order to determine optimal rational expansion of fuel-to-fuel collision probability, the calculations were carried out by varying the number of rational terms from 1 to 6. The results show that 4 terms are sufficient. The further increase of the number of terms affects the computing time, while the impact on accuracy is negligible. To illustrate the convergence of the results, the fuel subdivision is gradually refined varying the number of fuel pin subdivisions from 1 to 32 equal-area annuli. The results show very good agreement with the reference MCNP calculation. (authors)
- Research Organization:
- American Nuclear Society, Inc., 555 N. Kensington Avenue, La Grange Park, Illinois 60526 (United States)
- OSTI ID:
- 22105611
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: PHYSOR 2012: Conference on Advances in Reactor Physics - Linking Research, Industry, and Education, Knoxville, TN (United States), 15-20 Apr 2012; Other Information: Country of input: France; 16 refs.
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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Related Subjects
APPROXIMATIONS
CANDU TYPE REACTORS
CAPTURE
COLLISIONS
COMPARATIVE EVALUATIONS
EQUIVALENCE PRINCIPLE
EXPANSION
FUEL PINS
HOMOGENEOUS MIXTURES
HYDROGEN
NUCLEAR FUELS
PROBABILITY
REACTOR LATTICES
RESONANCE
RESONANCE INTEGRALS
SELF-SHIELDING
URANIUM 238