Fine mesh pin-by-pin analysis of IPWR equilibrium core

Abstract

Detailed fine mesh reactor physics simulations are warranted for reactor cores in order to estimate the important safety parameters such as detailed pin power distribution in the core and local pin peaking factors. A pin-by-pin reactor analysis code HEXPIN has been developed to perform 3D reactor core analysis with a pincell size mesh. HEXPIN uses the conventional two step calculation methodology for performing reactor calculations. India is developing a 2700 MWth/900 MWe Indian Pressurized Water Reactor (IPWR) for developing indigenous capability for commercial light water technology. It uses enriched uranium oxide fuel. The batch refueling scheme is adopted for fuel cycle management. A fine mesh pin-by-pin analysis of equilibrium core of IPWR has been performed using HEXPIN code system. The pin homogenised parametric cross section library, required for HEXPIN calculation, has been generated using lattice burn up code EXCEL. The equilibrium core calculation has been performed by a set of repeated calculations till a converged core configuration is achieved. The present paper gives the methodology and brief results of the analysis.