DOE OSTI2016
In conventional transient analysis, thermal hydraulics calculations are generally coupled to deterministic neutronics solvers. Due to the limited accuracy of deterministic methods and the rapid development of computer power, Monte Carlo neutronics calculations have received increasing attention nowadays. One of challenges for Monte Carlo methods coupled to thermal hydraulics calculations is the temperature dependent cross sections. Taking the detailed temperature distribution feedback into account, each nuclide may be in a large range of temperatures, pre-generated libraries at every temperature point are no longer applicable owing to unaffordable memory footprint. Different solutions have been proposed to deal with this problem. TMS, accounting for Doppler broadening effect by the explicit treatment of thermal motion, was used to model fast transients in Serpent 2. Stochastic mixing, using two sets of libraries for each nuclide and mixing them to get the correct temperature, was used in transient analysis by Sjenitzer and Hoogenboom. Besides, there are other on the fly Doppler broadening methods being developed, including series expansion of cross sections, multipole representation, different integration algorithms based on Doppler broadening equation. In this paper, on the fly Doppler broadening treatment based on integration algorithms was applied to transient calculation in Reactor Monte Carlo code RMC . In the following section, the integration algorithms implemented and dynamic simulation method in RMC is briefly introduced. Finally, a pure physical transient fuel assembly model was chosen for numerical validation. (authors)
21 SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLANTS↗