Nuclear data sensitivity analysis and uncertainty propagation in the KYADJ whole-core transport code

¹ Science and Technology on Reactor System Design Technology Laboratory, Nuclear Power Institute of China, Chengdu, 610041, China
² Department of Engineering Physics, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China

^* e-mail: q-wu15@mails.tsinghua.edu.cn

Published online: 30 September 2020

Abstract

Nuclear data sensitivity analysis and uncertainty propagation have been extensively applied to nuclear data adjustment and uncertainty quantification in the field of nuclear engineering. Sensitivity and Uncertainty (S&U) analysis is developed in the KYADJ whole-core transport code in order to meet the requirement of advanced reactor design. KYADJ aims to use two-dimension Method of Characteristic (MOC) and one-dimension discrete ordinate (S_N) coupled method to solve the neutron transport equation and achieve one-step direct transport calculation of the reactor core. Developing sensitivity and uncertainty analysis module in KYADJ can minimize deviations caused by modeling approximation and enhance calculation efficiency. This work describes the application of the classic perturbation theory to the KYADJ transport solver. In order to obtain uncertainty, a technique is proposed for processing a covariance data file in 45-group energy grid instead of 44-group SCALE 6.1 covariance data which is extensively used in various codes. Numerical results for Uncertainty Analysis in Modelling (UAM) benchmarks and the SF96 benchmark are presented. The results agree well with the reference and the capability of S&U analysis in KYADJ is verified.