Neutronics benchmark analysis of the EBR-II SHRT-45R with SAC-3D

Abstract

Neutronics calculation model plays a very important role in applying a specific simulation of a reactor system. The accuracy of the reactor core neutronics calculation results can hugely affect the final results of the reactor system analysis. At present, system analysis codes applied two kinds of methods to conduct the neutronics calculation. In normal conditions, the point kinetics model can get a satisfying result. But in the large scale reactor core or in several accident conditions in which the reactor core power distribution varies greatly in space, the point kinetics model may have a result with a large error caused by ignoring the spacing effect. To solve this problem, a system code with a 3D neutronics calculation model inside is required. SAC is a system analysis code with different versions which is developed by North China Electric Power University. In the SAC-3D version, we apply the hexagonal nodal expansion method for the diffusion equation to conduct the core flux (power) distribution calculation. In this paper, we prepared the calculation model of the EBR-II SHRT-45R reactor core with the neutronics calculation module integrated with SAC-3D and do the neutronics benchmark analysis. By comparing with the benchmark data and other project participants’ results, the good agreement demonstrated the accuracy and capability of SAC-3D to simulate the principle physics phenomenon for the liquid-cooled fast reactor.