Abstract
The CASL reactor simulation package VERA has been adapted to provide high-fidelity simulation capabilities for modeling source range detector response during subcritical reactor configurations. New features include the activation and shuffling of secondary-source assemblies, use of burned fuel neutron emission data from the ORIGEN depletion solver to the MPACT deterministic neutron transport solver, allowance of user-defined sources in MPACT based on material composition, ability to solve the subcritical source-driven system with neutron multiplication using the MPACT diffusion solver, and transfer of the calculated fission source from MPACT to the continuous-energy Monte Carlo solver Shift for final detector response evaluation using the CADIS methodology for variance reduction. These new capabilities were benchmarked against Watts Bar Unit 1 plant operating data for the first few fuel loading steps and were found to demonstrate excellent agreement with the measured data.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 320-337 |
| Number of pages | 18 |
| Journal | Nuclear Science and Engineering |
| Volume | 195 |
| Issue number | 3 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - 2021 |
Funding
This research made use of the resources of the High Performance Computing Center at Idaho National Laboratory, which is supported by the DOE Office of Nuclear Energy under contract number DE-AC07-05ID14517. This research also used resources of CADES at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, which is supported by the DOE Office of Science under contract number DE-AC05-00OR22725. This research was supported by CASL ( www.casl.gov ), an Energy Innovation Hub for Modeling and Simulation of Nuclear Reactors ( http://www.energy.gov/hubs ) under the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) contract number DE-AC05-00OR22725. This research was supported by CASL (www.casl.gov), an Energy Innovation Hub for Modeling and Simulation of Nuclear Reactors (http://www.energy.gov/hubs) under the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) contract number DE-AC05-00OR22725. This research made use of the resources of the High Performance Computing Center at Idaho National Laboratory, which is supported by the DOE Office of Nuclear Energy under contract number DE-AC07-05ID14517. This research also used resources of CADES at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, which is supported by the DOE Office of Science under contract number DE-AC05-00OR22725. Notice: This manuscript has been authored by UT-Battelle, LLC, under contract DE-AC05-00OR22725 with the DOE. The U.S. government retains and the publisher, by accepting the article for publication, acknowledges that the U.S. government retains a nonexclusive, paid-up, irrevocable, worldwide license to publish or reproduce the published form of this manuscript, or allow others to do so, for U.S. government purposes. DOE will provide public access to these results of federally sponsored research in accordance with the DOE Public Access Plan (http://energy.gov/downloads/doe-public-access-plan).
Keywords
- CASL
- VERA
- detector response
- secondary source
- source range