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Development of multi-group Monte-Carlo transport and depletion coupling calculation method and verification with metal-fueled fast reactor

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Abstract

The accurate modeling of depletion, intricately tied to the solution of the neutron transport equation, is crucial for the design, analysis, and licensing of nuclear reactors and their fuel cycles. This paper introduces a novel multi-group Monte-Carlo depletion calculation approach. Multi-group cross-sections (MGXS) are derived from both 3D whole-core model and 2D fuel subassembly model using the continuous-energy Monte-Carlo method. Core calculations employ the multi-group Monte-Carlo method, accommodating both homogeneous and specific local heterogeneous geometries. The proposed method has been validated against the MET-1000 metal-fueled fast reactors, using both the OECD/NEA benchmark and a new refueling benchmark introduced in this paper. Our findings suggest that microscopic MGXS, produced via the Monte-Carlo method, are viable for fast reactor depletion analyses. Furthermore, the locally heterogeneous model with angular-dependent MGXS offers robust predictions for core reactivity, control rod value, sodium void value, Doppler constants, power distribution, and concentration levels.

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Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are openly available in Science Data Bank at https://www.doi.org/10.57760/sciencedb.j00186.00229 and https://cstr.cn/31253.11.sciencedb.j00186.00229.

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Acknowledgements

The computations in this paper were run on the π 2.0 cluster supported by the Center for High-Performance Computing at Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Nuclear Science and Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, 200240, China

    Hui Guo, Yi-Wei Wu, Qu-Fei Song, Yu-Yang Shen & Han-Yang Gu

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  1. Hui Guo
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Contributions

All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by Hui Guo,  Yi-Wei Wu, Qu-Fei Song, Yu-Yang Shen, Han-Yang Gu. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Hui Guo and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Han-Yang Gu.

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The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Additional information

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 12105170, 12135008), Science and Technology on Reactor System Design Technology Laboratory.

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Guo, H., Wu, YW., Song, QF. et al. Development of multi-group Monte-Carlo transport and depletion coupling calculation method and verification with metal-fueled fast reactor. NUCL SCI TECH 34, 163 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41365-023-01310-3

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