Coupled Neutron and Gamma Heating Calculation Based on VARIANT Nodal Transport Method
- Purdue University, School of Nuclear Engineering, West Lafayette, IN 47906-2017 (United States)
Accurate determination of temperature distributions in fuel pins and duct walls is essential for fuel-pin performance and assembly bowing analyses. Currently, the multi-assembly, sub-channel analysis code SE2-ANL is used in thermalhydraulic analysis of sodium cooled fast reactors (SFR). SE2- ANL is interfaced with the DIF3D/GAMSOR/DIF3D procedure for coupled neutron and gamma heating calculations, developed at Argonne National Laboratory (ANL). In this procedure, the neutron flux distribution is first calculated using the finite-difference diffusion theory option of the DIF3D code. Using the neutron flux solution, the GAMSOR code computes the gamma source distribution for the subsequent gamma flux calculation with DIF3D. However, in the current heating calculation scheme, the neutron and gamma flux calculations are limited to six triangular meshes per hexagonal assembly. In addition, the pin power distributions are estimated by assuming that the power distribution within an assembly is separable in the radial and axial directions. In each assembly, the axial power profile is obtained by averaging the power densities of six triangular meshes at each axial mesh interval. The radial power profile is evaluated at a single axial mesh (e.g., at the core mid-plane) by approximating the neutron and gamma flux distributions by a linear or quadratic polynomial of two variables x and y, depending on the polynomial order specified by the user. The coefficients of the linear and quadratic polynomials are determined by the least squares fit of six and 24 triangular mesh fluxes, respectively. Furthermore, the total heat generation rate in an assembly duct wall is simply determined by a user-specified fraction of the total gamma heating within that assembly. With the advancement of computer technology, the nodal transport theory code VARIANT is routinely used in core design analyses of SFR instead of DIF3D. It is therefore necessary to develop a new heating calculation procedure based on VARIANT neutron and gamma transport calculations. In this study, a new, coupled neutron and gamma heating calculation scheme has been developed to determine the pin power distributions more accurately by eliminating the aforementioned limitations of the current procedure. For this, the GAMSOR code has been extended to generate the intra-nodal gamma source distribution to be consistent with the trial functions of VARIANT. In the new heating calculation procedure, the neutron flux distribution is determined first by solving an eigenvalue transport problem using VARIANT. The obtained neutron flux is then used in GAMSOR to calculate the gamma source distribution. Using this gamma source distribution, the gamma flux distribution is determined by solving a fixed-source transport problem using VARIANT again. Using the computed neutron and gamma flux distributions, the power distribution in each fuel pin and duct wall is determined using a new utility code CURVE, which has been developed to evaluate the VARIANT flux solution at each fuel pin position and along the duct mid-wall. For each pin segment contained in a VARIANT node, the axial power shape is represented as a quadratic profile. The performance of the new heating calculation scheme based on VARIANT transport solutions has been tested against the existing method of SE2-ANL, using the ABR-1000 metal core design. The gamma source distribution and the assembly, fuel pin and duct wall power distributions were calculated and compared. (authors)
- OSTI ID:
- 23042835
- Journal Information:
- Transactions of the American Nuclear Society, Vol. 115; Conference: 2016 ANS Winter Meeting and Nuclear Technology Expo, Las Vegas, NV (United States), 6-10 Nov 2016; Other Information: Country of input: France; 7 refs.; available from American Nuclear Society - ANS, 555 North Kensington Avenue, La Grange Park, IL 60526 (US); ISSN 0003-018X
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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