Comparison of SERPENT and SCALE methodology for LWRs transport calculations and additionally uncertainty analysis for cross-section perturbation with SAMPLER module

Abstract

In nuclear safety research, the quality of the results of simulation codes is widely determined by the reactor design and safe operation, and the description of neutron transport in the reactor core is a feature of particular importance. Moreover, for the long effort that is made, there remain uncertainties in simulation results due to the neutronic data and input specification that need a huge effort to be eliminated. A realistic estimation of these uncertainties is required for finding out the reliability of the results. This explains the increasing demand in recent years for calculations in the nuclear fields with best-estimate codes that proved confidence bounds of simulation results. All this has lead to the Benchmark for Uncertainty Analysis in Modelling (UAM) for Design, Operation and Safety Analysis of LWRs of the NEA. The UAM-Benchmark coupling multi-physics and multi-scale analysis using as a basis complete sets of input specifications of boiling water reactors (BWR) and pressurized water reactors (PWR). In this study, the results of the transport calculations carried out using the SCALE-6.2 program (TRITON/NEWT and TRITON/KENO modules) as well as Monte Carlo SERPENT code, are presented. Additionally, they have been made uncertainties calculation for a PWR 15 × 15 and a BWR 7 × 7 fuel elements, in two different configurations (with and without control rod), and two different states, Hot Full Power (HFP) and Hot Zero Power (HZP), using the TSUNAMI module, which uses the Generalized Perturbation Theory (GPT), and SAMPLER, which uses stochastic sampling techniques for cross-sections perturbations. The results obtained and validated are compared with references results and similar studies presented in the exercise I-2 (Lattice Physics) of UAM-Benchmark.