Resonance self-shielding treatment and analysis of resonance integral tables for Fully Ceramic Micro-encapsulated fuels with the Embedded Self-Shielding Method

Abstract

A resonance calculation method for Fully Ceramic Micro-encapsulated (FCM) fuels containing stochastically dispersed tri-structural isotropic (TRISO) coated fuel particles has been proposed in this research. The purpose is to obtain effective homogenized resonance cross sections representing the effect of double heterogeneity (DH). The Monte Carlo code MVP is used to solve the heterogeneity in the isolated FCM fuels pin, and to couple with the method of characteristic (MOC) to generate heterogeneous resonance integral (RI) tables for the following Embedded Self-Shielding Method (ESSM) based resonance calculation. The ESSM method is employed to treat the heterogeneity in the lattice (Dancoff effect). Heterogeneous RI tables based on different packing fraction may differ in relationship between background and self-shielded cross sections. Analysis of this distinction’s impact on ESSM calculation has been conducted. Furthermore, resonance interference effect is neglected in ESSM because heterogeneous RI tables are developed for isolated resonant nuclide system. Therefore, Resonance Interference Factor (RIF) Method was applied to correct cross sections from ESSM. To obtain RIF, slowing-down equation need be solved twice for different homogeneous systems. Whereas, the cross section neglecting interference effect could be received by interpolating in homogeneous RI tables to improve efficiency. Evaluation of errors caused by interpolation in RIF method was performed with reference solutions from MVP. Numerical results show that the new method is proved effective in DH capability for resonance self-shielding calculation.