A Pin Power Reconstruction Method for CANDU Reactor Cores Based on Coarse-Mesh Finite Difference Calculations

Journal Article · Sat Apr 15 04:00:00 EDT 2000 · Nuclear Technology

OSTI ID:20822147

Lee, Hyung-Seok ^[1]; Yang, Won Sik ^[1]; Na, Man Gyun ^[1]; Choi, Hangbok ^[2]

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1. Chosun University (Korea, Republic of)
2. Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute (Korea, Republic of)

A reconstruction method has been developed for recovering pin powers from Canada deuterium uranium (CANDU) reactor core calculations performed with a coarse-mesh finite difference diffusion approximation and single-assembly lattice calculations. The homogeneous intranodal distributions of group fluxes are efficiently computed using polynomial shapes constrained to satisfy the nodal information approximated from the node-average fluxes. The group fluxes of individual fuel pins in a heterogeneous fuel bundle are determined using these homogeneous intranodal flux distributions and the form functions obtained from the single-assembly lattice calculations. The pin powers are obtained using these pin fluxes and the pin power cross sections generated by the single-assembly lattice calculation. The accuracy of the reconstruction schemes has been estimated by performing benchmark calculations for partial core representation of a natural uranium CANDU reactor. The results indicate that the reconstruction schemes are quite accurate, yielding maximum pin power errors of less than {approx}3%. The main contribution to the reconstruction error is made by the errors in the node-average fluxes obtained from the coarse-mesh finite difference diffusion calculation; the errors due to the reconstruction schemes are <1%.

• OSTI ID: 20822147
• Journal Information: Nuclear Technology, Journal Name: Nuclear Technology Journal Issue: 1 Vol. 130; ISSN 0029-5450; ISSN NUTYBB
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

21 SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLANTS
BENCHMARKS
DEUTERIUM
DIFFUSION
DISTRIBUTION
DOUGLAS POINT ONTARIO REACTOR
ERRORS
FUEL ELEMENT CLUSTERS
FUEL PINS
NATURAL URANIUM