Automating some analysis and design calculations of miniature neutron source reactors at CERT (I)

Abstract

Installation of Nigeria's Miniature Neutron Source Reactor (MNSR) has been completed and the facility is awaiting commissioning. The operator organization, Centre for Energy Research and Training (CERT), is therefore embarking on an ambitious project of automating crucial reactor design/analysis calculations with a view to simplifying them for the average reactor engineer or scientist. In this work, we show how the lattice code WIMS and core analysis code CITATION, have been combined in an innovative, interactive Windows environment, to automatically carry out each of the following calculations on MNSRs: Super- or sub-criticality test, control rod worth, core excess reactivity and shutdown margin, locating control rod's critical depth of insertion, control rod calibration, beryllium shims calibration, verification of some safety criteria, modifying core dimensions interactively, modifying beryllium reflectors dimensions interactively and calculating various temperature coefficients of reactivity. Only one CITATION base input data need to be prepared from group constants generated by WIMS and any of these calculations are carried out automatically, thereby eliminating the tedium and errors that usually attend manual data manipulation or regeneration. Consequently, calculations that used to take days may now be more reliably done within minutes.