Study of MOX-fueled VVER-1000 pin cell using ν-TRAC with ENDF/B-VIII.0 library

Abstract

This paper compares the ENDF/B-VIII.0 library for the MOX-fueled VVER-1000 pin cell benchmark with ENDF/B-VII.0 library using the ν-TRAC code and demonstrates the modeling capability of the code. ν-TRAC is a MOC-based code for simulating neutron transport in fuel assembly lattices, with the ability to model cell heterogeneities. The material cross-section significantly impacts neutron transport calculations; therefore, a 172 multigroup cross-section library has been generated using the most recent version of ENDF/B-VIII.0 and the open-source NJOY-2016 code. This nuclear data file includes modifications to the cross-section of major actinides and other light nuclides. Five MOX fuel variants differing in fuel isotopic composition and five states differing in fuel temperature, the moderator, and poison in the moderator are investigated using the most recent library. The impact of new release on the infinite multiplication factor and reactivity change due to the different operating states is studied. Results of ν-TRAC code using multigroup data libraries based on ENDF/B-VIII.0 and ENDF/B-VII.0 are compared with corresponding results from SCALE/SAS2H, HELIOS, and MCU.

Keywords

• Method of characteristics
• Nuclear data
• ENDF/B-VIII.0
• VVER-1000
• MOX fuel