Abstract
The international experimental program PETALE will be carried out at the CROCUS research reactor of EPFL. The program aims at measuring neutron penetration in slabs made of materials composing typical LWR reactor pressure vessel. The measurements will be used for code and nuclear data validation and for the evaluation of the reflecting properties of these materials. In this paper the representativity of the PETALE experiments is assessed with respect to operational LWR reactors dosimetry and activation evaluations using the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) in-house tool NUSS. The NUSS tool allows the stochastic sampling of nuclear data using covariance matrices available in modern nuclear data libraries and the subsequent running of a Monte Carlo code with the modified data files. The representativity can then be assessed based on the Pearson correlation coefficients. The ultimate goal of the work is first of all to assess if the planned PETALE measurements could be applicable beyond their primary purpose and serve for extending the PSI validation database for LWR reactor dosimetry evaluations. Secondly, provided that the PETALE measurements are found useful for the task above, the information on the correlations between the PETALE neutron detectors’ responses and the reactor dosimetry quantities of interest, shall be presented and discussed.
Highlights
The fast neutron fluence (FNF) is a conventional parameter for analysis in the LWR dosimetry
NUSS has been tested for different types of systems with different quantities of interest and for different tasks, namely for nuclear data uncertainty quantification (UQ) and parameter correlation studies using the Pearson correlation coefficient (PCC), as well as for a variance-based global sensitivity analysis (GSA) [11]
When the neutron transport calculations are realized with modern Monte Carlo codes using detailed geometry modelling, one of the primary sources of uncertainty is the nuclear data
Summary
The fast neutron fluence (FNF) is a conventional parameter for analysis in the LWR dosimetry. The number of publicly open evaluated benchmark experiments applicable for validation of the calculation methodologies for FNF assessment is limited and every appropriate benchmark or available experimental data from operational power reactors are practically very valuable. The PETALE setup can be useful for providing experimental data applicable for validation of calculation methodologies for typical LWR reactor dosimetry applications, like the one being developed and validated at PSI [1], [2], [3]. From the viewpoint of validation of nuclear data libraries for FNF simulations, such question can be investigated with the help of the correlation analysis as illustrated in the examples below. Eight metallic reflector plates, each 2-cm thick, will be installed next to the CROCUS reactor core. A sketch of the experimental configuration is illustrated in Fig. 1 and more detailed information can be found in [6], [7] [8]
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