AR reactor neutronics multi-code validation*

Bae, Jin Whan; Peterson, Ethan; Shimwell, Jonathan

doi:10.1088/1741-4326/ac5450

Title: AR reactor neutronics multi-code validation*

Journal Article · 05 April 2022 · Nuclear Fusion

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1088/1741-4326/ac5450 · OSTI ID:1866704

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Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
Massachusetts Inst. of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA (United States)
Culham Science Centre, Abingdon (United Kingdom). Culham Centre for Fusion Energy (CCFE)

The affordable, robust, compact (ARC) reactor is a tokamak fusion reactor concept currently under development by Commonwealth Fusion Systems and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. There are three important neutronics considerations for the operation of the ARC reactor: (1) breeding of enough tritium in the blanket to sustain the D–T reaction in the plasma; (2) ensuring low fluence on the superconducting toroidal field coils; and (3) assessing neutron volumetric heating in structural components. Here, this work aims to perform a validation of the neutronics analysis approach by code-to-code comparison. State-of-the-art software stacks are employed for the neutronics analysis of the ARC reactor, and a computer-aided design (CAD) model is used directly for Monte Carlo (MC) neutron transport calculations. Three software stacks, Attila-MCNP, OpenMC-DAGMC, and Shift-DAGMC, are used to perform neutronic analyses of a 90° sector CAD model of the ARC reactor. In conclusion, results show that the flux tallies calculated by the three software stacks are very close. Also, the volumetric heating and tritium breeding values have less than 0.6% relative difference between codes.

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Research Organization:: Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)

Sponsoring Organization:: USDOE Advanced Research Projects Agency - Energy (ARPA-E); RCUK Energy Programme

Grant/Contract Number:: AC05-00OR22725; AR0001369; EP/I501045/1

OSTI ID:: 1866704

Journal Information:: Nuclear Fusion, Vol. 62, Issue 6; ISSN 0029-5515

Publisher:: IOP ScienceCopyright Statement

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

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