Equilibrium cycle pin by pin transport depletion calculations with DeCART
- Dept. of Nuclear Engineering and Radiological Sciences, Univ. of Michigan, 2200 Bonisteel Blvd, Ann Arbor, MI 48109 (United States)
- Argonne National Laboratory, 9700 S. Cass Ave, Argonne, IL 60439 (United States)
As the Advanced Fuel Cycle Initiative (AFCI) program has matured it has become more important to utilize more advanced simulation methods. The work reported here was performed as part of the AFCI fellowship program to develop and demonstrate the capability of performing high fidelity equilibrium cycle calculations. As part of the work here, a new multi-cycle analysis capability was implemented in the DeCART code which included modifying the depletion modules to perform nuclide decay calculations, implementing an assembly shuffling pattern description, and modifying iteration schemes. During the work, stability issues were uncovered with respect to converging simultaneously the neutron flux, isotopics, and fluid density and temperature distributions in 3-D. Relaxation factors were implemented which considerably improved the stability of the convergence. To demonstrate the capability two core designs were utilized, a reference UOX core and a CORAIL core. Full core equilibrium cycle calculations were performed on both cores and the discharge isotopics were compared. From this comparison it was noted that the improved modeling capability was not drastically different in its prediction of the discharge isotopics when compared to 2-D single assembly or 2-D core models. For fissile isotopes such as U-235, Pu-239, and Pu-241 the relative differences were 1.91%, 1.88%, and 0.59%), respectively. While this difference may not seem large it translates to mass differences on the order of tens of grams per assembly, which may be significant for the purposes of accounting of special nuclear material. (authors)
- Research Organization:
- American Nuclear Society, Inc., 555 N. Kensington Avenue, La Grange Park, Illinois 60526 (United States)
- OSTI ID:
- 22105695
- 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; 7 refs.
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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Related Subjects
11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS
COMPARATIVE EVALUATIONS
DENSITY
DESIGN
EQUILIBRIUM
FUEL CYCLE
ITERATIVE METHODS
MASS DIFFERENCE
NEUTRON FLUX
PLUTONIUM 239
PLUTONIUM 241
REACTOR CORES
REACTOR STABILITY
SIMULATION
TEMPERATURE DISTRIBUTION
THREE-DIMENSIONAL CALCULATIONS
URANIUM 235