Abstract
To demonstrate that nuclear reactors can be built faster and more economically than they have been in the past, the US Department of Energy Office of Nuclear Energy is sponsoring the development of a small nuclear reactor called the Transformational Challenge Reactor (TCR) [1–2]. An important part of the design and licencing process of a new reactor is validation of the software used to analyze the reactor using established reactor physics benchmarks. This paper discusses validation of the neutronics software used to model four preliminary designs of the TCR core [2]. Because the TCR core design uses innovative technology and methods, comparable established benchmarks are limited or do not exist. For this effort, established benchmarks from the International Handbook of Evaluated Criticality Safety Benchmark Experiments (ICSBEP) [3] were considered to be suitable for this design based on analysis using the SCALE/TSUNAMI-computed similarity indices to determine the amount of shared uncertainty between the design and each selected benchmark experiment. This paper addresses the challenges faced in benchmarking a unique reactor for licensing and construction, a task that will become more common as a new generation of innovative nuclear reactors are designed and built.
Highlights
Neutronics modeling of the Transformational Challenge Reactor (TCR) is being performed in the SCALE module KENO-VI [4]
After each case has been run in KENO, it is run in the SCALE module TSUNAMI [6]
Each case is compared to the benchmarks in the ICSBEP using the SCALE module TSUNAMI-IP
Summary
Neutronics modeling of the Transformational Challenge Reactor (TCR) is being performed in the SCALE module KENO-VI [4]. This work is critical to the design process. The result of this study—the estimated error between computational and experimental keff—informs the process of designing the reactor core. Depending on the study’s results, the design must incorporate characteristics (e.g., reactivity adjustment mechanisms) to ensure that the reactor goes critical while still being safe. This process is especially important for advanced reactors, because significantly fewer advanced reactors have been built and operated than conventional light water reactors (LWRs). There is less historical knowledge about the operation of advanced reactors than LWRs. reactor designers and analysts have less experience with advanced reactor concepts [5]
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