Development of a reference scheme for MOX lattice physics calculations

Journal Article · Thu Dec 31 04:00:00 EST 1998 · Transactions of the American Nuclear Society

OSTI ID:298339

Finck, P J; Stenberg, C G ^[1]; Roy, R ^[2]

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1. Argonne National Lab., IL (United States)
2. Ecole Polytechnique, Montreal, Quebec (Canada)

The US program to dispose of weapons-grade Pu could involve the irradiation of mixed-oxide (MOX) fuel assemblies in commercial light water reactors. This will require licensing acceptance because of the modifications to the core safety characteristics. In particular, core neutronics will be significantly modified, thus making it necessary to validate the standard suites of neutronics codes for that particular application. Validation criteria are still unclear, but it seems reasonable to expect that the same level of accuracy will be expected for MOX as that which has been achieved for UO{sub 2}. Commercial lattice physics codes are invariably claimed to be accurate for MOX analysis but often lack independent confirmation of their performance on a representative experimental database. Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) has started implementing a public domain suite of codes to provide for a capability to perform independent assessments of MOX core analyses. The DRAGON lattice code was chosen, and fine group ENDF/B-VI.04 and JEF-2.2 libraries have been developed. The objective of this work is to validate the DRAGON algorithms with respect to continuous-energy Monte Carlo for a suite of realistic UO{sub 2}-MOX benchmark cases, with the aim of establishing a reference DRAGON scheme with a demonstrated high level of accuracy and no computing resource constraints. Using this scheme as a reference, future work will be devoted to obtaining simpler and less costly schemes that preserve accuracy as much as possible.

• OSTI ID: 298339
• Report Number(s): CONF-981106--
• Journal Information: Transactions of the American Nuclear Society, Journal Name: Transactions of the American Nuclear Society Vol. 79; ISSN TANSAO; ISSN 0003-018X
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

21 SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLANTS
99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS
BENCHMARKS
D CODES
MIXED OXIDE FUELS
NUCLEAR WEAPONS DISMANTLEMENT
REACTOR KINETICS
VALIDATION
WATER COOLED REACTORS