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Title: Improved Neutronics Treatment of Burnable Poisons for the Prismatic HTR

Abstract

In prismatic block High Temperature Reactors (HTR), highly absorbing material such a burnable poison (BP) cause local flux depressions and large gradients in the flux across the blocks which can be a challenge to capture accurately with traditional homogenization methods. The purpose of this paper is to quantify the error associated with spatial homogenization, spectral condensation and discretization and to highlight what is needed for improved neutronics treatments of burnable poisons for the prismatic HTR. A new triangular based mesh is designed to separate the BP regions from the fuel assembly. A set of packages including Serpent (Monte Carlo), Xuthos (1storder Sn), Pronghorn (diffusion), INSTANT (Pn) and RattleSnake (2ndorder Sn) is used for this study. The results from the deterministic calculations show that the cross sections generated directly in Serpent are not sufficient to accurately reproduce the reference Monte Carlo solution in all cases. The BP treatment produces good results, but this is mainly due to error cancellation. However, the Super Cell (SC) approach yields cross sections that are consistent with cross sections prepared on an “exact” full core calculation. In addition, very good agreement exists between the various deterministic transport and diffusion codes in both eigenvalue and power distributions.more » Future research will focus on improving the cross sections and quantifying the error cancellation.« less

Authors:
; ; ;
Publication Date:
Research Org.:
Idaho National Lab. (INL), Idaho Falls, ID (United States)
Sponsoring Org.:
DOE - NE
OSTI Identifier:
1060972
Report Number(s):
INL/CON-12-24399
DOE Contract Number:  
DE-AC07-05ID14517
Resource Type:
Conference
Resource Relation:
Conference: 6th International Topical Meeting on High Temperature Reactor Technology HTR2012,Miraikan, Tokyo, Japan,10/28/2012,11/01/2012
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Subject:
22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS; FBP; Fixed Burnable Poisons; HTR; Prismatic

Citation Formats

Wang, Y, Bingham, A A, Ortensi, J, and Permann, C J. Improved Neutronics Treatment of Burnable Poisons for the Prismatic HTR. United States: N. p., 2012. Web.
Wang, Y, Bingham, A A, Ortensi, J, & Permann, C J. Improved Neutronics Treatment of Burnable Poisons for the Prismatic HTR. United States.
Wang, Y, Bingham, A A, Ortensi, J, and Permann, C J. 2012. "Improved Neutronics Treatment of Burnable Poisons for the Prismatic HTR". United States. https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1060972.
@article{osti_1060972,
title = {Improved Neutronics Treatment of Burnable Poisons for the Prismatic HTR},
author = {Wang, Y and Bingham, A A and Ortensi, J and Permann, C J},
abstractNote = {In prismatic block High Temperature Reactors (HTR), highly absorbing material such a burnable poison (BP) cause local flux depressions and large gradients in the flux across the blocks which can be a challenge to capture accurately with traditional homogenization methods. The purpose of this paper is to quantify the error associated with spatial homogenization, spectral condensation and discretization and to highlight what is needed for improved neutronics treatments of burnable poisons for the prismatic HTR. A new triangular based mesh is designed to separate the BP regions from the fuel assembly. A set of packages including Serpent (Monte Carlo), Xuthos (1storder Sn), Pronghorn (diffusion), INSTANT (Pn) and RattleSnake (2ndorder Sn) is used for this study. The results from the deterministic calculations show that the cross sections generated directly in Serpent are not sufficient to accurately reproduce the reference Monte Carlo solution in all cases. The BP treatment produces good results, but this is mainly due to error cancellation. However, the Super Cell (SC) approach yields cross sections that are consistent with cross sections prepared on an “exact” full core calculation. In addition, very good agreement exists between the various deterministic transport and diffusion codes in both eigenvalue and power distributions. Future research will focus on improving the cross sections and quantifying the error cancellation.},
doi = {},
url = {https://www.osti.gov/biblio/1060972}, journal = {},
number = ,
volume = ,
place = {United States},
year = {Mon Oct 01 00:00:00 EDT 2012},
month = {Mon Oct 01 00:00:00 EDT 2012}
}

Conference:
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