A STUDY OF LEAKAGE-CORRECTED TWO-STEP METHOD BASED ON THE NODAL EQUIVALENCE THEORY FOR FAST REACTOR ANALYSIS

Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) 291 Daehak-ro, Yuseong-gu, Daejeon 34141, Republic of Korea

seongdong@kaist.ac.kr
yongheekim@kaist.ac.kr

Published online: 22 February 2021

Abstract

The conventional two-step method based on the generalized equivalence theory (GET) cannot be directly applied to the fast reactor analysis since the assumption of the space-energy separability is not very valid due to a relatively long neutron mean free path. This study aims to develop a leakage-corrected two-step method for the fast reactor analysis with the aid of the albedo-corrected parameterized equivalence constants (APEC) method. The critical idea of the APEC method is to correct the homogenized group constants (HGCs) including discontinuity factors (DFs) during the nodal calculation through predetermined APEC functions. The APEC functions are functionalized in terms of the normalized leakage parameters such as a current-to-flux (CFR) ratio so that they can correct the cross-sections (XSs) and discontinuity factors by reflecting the in-situ neutron leakage information of the nodal analysis. The feasibility of the APEC-corrected two-step method was investigated by solving 5-group diffusion equations for a two-dimensional sodium-cooled fast reactor with a 6-triangle finite difference method. The 5-group HGCs for fuel assemblies were determined by using a continuous-energy Monte Carl code, and the conventional assembly discontinuity factors are also introduced for each hexagonal fuel assembly. First of all, it was demonstrated that the simple FDM scheme could reproduce the reference nodal quantities with the GET. And the APEC functions are formulated using the reference solutions to evaluate the feasibility of simple APEC functional for both XSs and DFs. Then, a smaller color-set problem was defined to determine practical APEC functions for the original benchmark, and various numerical evaluations are performed in terms of the k-eff value and nodal power distribution.