Progress on the Pool Critical Assembly Pressure Vessel Benchmark with PENTRAN

摘要

The pool critical assembly pressure vessel facility benchmark (PCA benchmark) consists of an analysis of the PCA reactor providing dimensions, material compositions, and measured equivalent fission fluxes for comparison to calculated values obtained through computational methods.[1] The original benchmark calculations as reported in NUREG/CR-6454 explain the process undertaken using the discrete ordinates transport code DORT utilizing multigroup cross sections from the BUGLE-93, SAILOR-95 and BUGLE-96 libraries, and incorporated a volume fraction cross section homogenization in the fuel region of the reactor. [2] This research will proceed to match and provide hyper accurate solutions compared to measured values by using the Parallel Environment Neutral-Particle TRANsport code (PENTRAN). The PENTRAN code system was developed by Sjoden and Haghighat, and can be used for 3-D multigroup forward or adjoint discrete ordinates (SN) simulations. The Su method is a deterministic approach that discretizes the angle, energy, and physical spatial variables into a finite number of discrete angular ordinates, energy groups, and spatial grids over the entire phase space system. [3] The current research utilizes the BUGLE-96 cross section library, and includes rigorous models of curved fuel plate assemblies and control rods using a flux weighted cross section homogenization scheme.