Abstract
The deployment of molten salt reactors requires validation of the computational tools used to support the licensing process. The Molten Salt Reactor Experiment (MSRE), built and operated in the 1960s, offers a unique inventory of experimental data for reactor physics benchmarks. The first benchmark based on the MSRE appeared in “The 2019 Edition of the IRPhEP [International Reactor Physics Experiment Evaluation Project] Handbook.” The benchmark refers to the first criticality experiment at zero power, stationary salt, and uniform temperature with 235U fuel. Simulations carried out for the developed benchmark model with the Monte Carlo code Serpent and ENDF/B-VII.1 cross-section library found that the calculated neutron multiplication is 1.02132 (±3 pcm) and that the combined bias of the model and experimental uncertainty is below 500 pcm. Such discrepancy between the experimental and calculated keff is not uncommon in benchmarks for graphite-moderated systems. The model created through this effort paves the way to additional benchmarks targeting reactor physics quantities of interest beyond multiplication factor.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 825-837 |
| Number of pages | 13 |
| Journal | Nuclear Science and Engineering |
| Volume | 195 |
| Issue number | 8 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - 2021 |
Funding
The authors express the deepest gratitude to those who greatly contributed to improve the quality of this benchmark, in particular, the IRPhEP external reviewers Luka Snoj (Jozef Stefan Institute) and Aslak Stubsgaard (Copenhagen Atomics), the chair of the IRPhEP expert group John Bess (Idaho National Laboratory), and all the members of IRPhEP. This research used the Savio computational cluster resource provided by the Berkeley Research Computing program at UC Berkeley (supported by the UC Berkeley Chancellor, Vice Chancellor for Research, and Chief Information Officer). This research was performed using funding received from the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Nuclear Energy’s Nuclear Energy University Programs. The authors express the deepest gratitude to those who greatly contributed to improve the quality of this benchmark, in particular, the IRPhEP external reviewers Luka Snoj (Jozef Stefan Institute) and Aslak Stubsgaard (Copenhagen Atomics), the chair of the IRPhEP expert group John Bess (Idaho National Laboratory), and all the members of IRPhEP. This research used the Savio computational cluster resource provided by the Berkeley Research Computing program at UC Berkeley (supported by the UC Berkeley Chancellor, Vice Chancellor for Research, and Chief Information Officer). This research was performed using funding received from the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Nuclear Energy?s Nuclear Energy University Programs.
Keywords
- Molten salt reactor
- criticality, benchmark