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research article

Comparisons of cell calculations for uranium-free light water reactor fuels

Paratte, Jean-M.
•
Akie, Hiroshi
•
Chawla, Rakesh  
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2000
Nuclear Technology

An effective way to reduce the large quantities of Pu currently accumulated worldwide would be to use uranium-free fuel in light water reactors (LWRs) so that no new Pu is produced. Such a possibility could be provided by an LWR fuel consisting of Pu in a neutronically inert matrix. It may be necessary to add a burnable absorber or thorium to reduce the reactivity swing during burnup. The methods and data currently used for LWR analyses have not been tested in conjunction with such exotic fuel materials. An international exercise has accordingly been launched to compare the relative performance of different code systems and the accuracy of the basic data. Comparison of the results of cell calculations done with fixed isotopic densities against reference Monte Carlo results shows fairly small but systematic differences in the multiplication factors. A sensitivity analysis done with different basic cross section libraries and the same code system allows one to distinguish between the effects of the codes and those of the databases. The results of the burnup calculations indicate a fair agreement in kINF both at beginning of life (BOL) and after 1200 days of irradiation [end of life (EOL)] under conditions representative of a present-day pressurized water reactor. At BOL, the fuel temperature coefficients agree fairly well among the different contributions, but unacceptably large differences are observed at EOL. The void coefficients agree well for low voidage, but for void fractions 90%, there are significant effects mostly due to the databases used. The agreement in the calculated boron worths is good.

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Type
research article
DOI
10.13182/NT00-A3084
Author(s)
Paratte, Jean-M.
Akie, Hiroshi
Chawla, Rakesh  
Delpech, Marc
Kloosterman, Jan Leen
Lombardi, Carlo
Mazzola, Alessandro
Pelloni, Sandro
Peneliau, Yannick
Takano, Hideki
Date Issued

2000

Publisher

ANS

Published in
Nuclear Technology
Volume

130

Issue

2

Start page

159

End page

176

Subjects

Nuclear fuels

•

Computer simulation

•

Light water reactors

•

Monte Carlo methods

•

Plutonium

•

Pressurized water reactors

•

Reactivity (nuclear)

•

Sensitivity analysis

•

Thorium

Note

Paul Scherrer Institute, CH-5232 Villigen, Switzerland

Editorial or Peer reviewed

REVIEWED

Written at

EPFL

EPFL units
LRS  
Available on Infoscience
September 17, 2010
Use this identifier to reference this record
https://infoscience.epfl.ch/handle/20.500.14299/53831
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