Nuclear Engineering and Technology

Korean Nuclear Society (한국원자력학회)
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Impact of molybdenum cross sections on FHR analysis

  • Ramey, Kyle M. (Nuclear and Radiological Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology) ;
  • Margulis, Marat (Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge) ;
  • Read, Nathaniel (Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge) ;
  • Shwageraus, Eugene (Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge) ;
  • Petrovic, Bojan (Nuclear and Radiological Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology)
  • Received : 2021.03.18
  • Accepted : 2021.09.21
  • Published : 2022.03.25
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Abstract

A recent benchmarking effort, under the auspices of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA), has been made to evaluate the current state of modeling and simulation tools available to model fluoride salt-cooled high temperature reactors (FHRs). The FHR benchmarking effort considered in this work consists of several cases evaluating the neutronic parameters of a 2D prismatic FHR fuel assembly model using the participants' choice of simulation tools. Benchmark participants blindly submitted results for comparison with overall good agreement, except for some which significantly differed on cases utilizing a molybdenum-bearing control rod. Participants utilizing more recently updated explicit isotopic cross sections had consistent results, whereas those using elemental molybdenum cross sections observed reactivity differences on the order of thousands of pcm relative to their peers. Through a series of supporting tests, the authors attribute the differences as being nuclear data driven from using older legacy elemental molybdenum cross sections. Quantitative analysis is conducted on the control rod to identify spectral, reaction rate, and cross section phenomena responsible for the observed differences. Results confirm the observed differences are attributable to the use of elemental cross sections which overestimate the reaction rates in strong resonance channels.

Keywords

Acknowledgement

The presented work is part of a broader effort to benchmark FHR modeling and simulations involving seven team members from four countries [5,6]. The benchmark is performed under the auspices of OECD NEA; the support of Mr. Ian Hill (Deputy Head, Division of Nuclear Science) is gratefully acknowledged.

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