Depletion capabilities in the OpenMC Monte Carlo particle transport code

Romano, Paul K.; Josey, Colin J.; Johnson, Andrew E.; Liang, Jingang

doi:10.1016/j.anucene.2020.107989

Title: Depletion capabilities in the OpenMC Monte Carlo particle transport code

Journal Article · Sat Nov 14 00:00:00 EST 2020 · Annals of Nuclear Energy (Oxford)

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.anucene.2020.107989· OSTI ID:1726218

Romano, Paul K. ^[1];

^[2]; Johnson, Andrew E. ^[3]; Liang, Jingang ^[4]

Argonne National Lab. (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States)
Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
Georgia Inst. of Technology, Atlanta, GA (United States)
Tsinghua Univ., Beijing (China)

A depletion solver has been implemented in OpenMC and is described herein. The depletion solver is implemented in Python and interfaces with OpenMC’s transport solver through a C++ application programming interface, which enables an in-memory transport-depletion coupling. Multiple integration methods for advancing in time have been implemented and exhibit tradeoffs in cost, accuracy, and memory use. For all time integration methods, evaluation of the matrix exponential is performed by using the incomplete partial fraction form of the Chebyshev rational approximation method. Simulations of a pressurized water reactor (PWR) pincell and a sodium-cooled fast reactor (SFR) assembly were carried out with OpenMC and Serpent. For both problems, the use of a high-fidelity depletion chain results in predictions of k_eff that agree within 20–30 pcm between OpenMC and Serpent. Predicted actinide concentrations were found to agree to a fraction of a percent, and most fission product concentrations were found to agree within 1%. Here, the few cases where larger differences were observed can be attributed either to differences in how the energy dependence of fission product yields is handled or deficiencies in the nuclear data used. OpenMC simulations of the PWR and SFR problems using a simplified 228-nuclide depletion chain demonstrate that it achieves accuracy close to that of the full, high-fidelity depletion chain with respect to the studied responses.

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Research Organization:: Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States); Argonne National Lab. (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States)

Sponsoring Organization:: USDOE National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA); USDOE Office of Science (SC)

Grant/Contract Number:: 89233218CNA000001; 17-SC-20-SC; AC02-06CH11357; AC07-05ID14517

OSTI ID:: 1726218

Alternate ID(s):: OSTI ID: 1776818

Report Number(s):: LA-UR-20-25299; TRN: US2205088

Journal Information:: Annals of Nuclear Energy (Oxford), Vol. 152, Issue C; ISSN 0306-4549

Publisher:: ElsevierCopyright Statement

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

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