VALIDATION OF WIMS11 FOR SMALL MODULAR REACTOR ANALYSIS

Wood Nuclear Queen Mother Square, Poundbury, Dorset DT1 3BW, UK

Peter.Smith2@woodplc.com

Published online: 22 February 2021

Abstract

The WIMS (Winfrith Improved Multigroup Scheme) reactor physics code is actively being developed for whole core modelling of a range of Small Modular Reactor types including the Pressurized Water Reactor (PWR), High Temperature Reactor (HTR), and Liquid Metal Cooled Fast reactor (LMFR). These developments include the capability for whole core multiphysics modelling with neutronics and thermal hydraulic feedback, as well as methods to determine the power deposition from neutron and gamma heating. Flux solutions are obtained using a wide variety of deterministic methods including diffusion theory, SP3, and full transport with the method of characteristics and Sn discrete ordinates methods, as well as multi-group Monte Carlo methods. The SP3 method allows both steady state and time dependent transient solutions by solving the time dependent SP3 equations. A wide variety of nuclear data libraries are available with WIMS including data from the JEF3.3, ENDF/B-VII.0 and CENDL3.1 nuclear data evaluations.

This paper presents validation of the latest version of the WIMS code, WIMS11, for PWR and HTR systems. Comparisons are made against physics data obtained from the OECD/NEA PWR Watts Bar multi-physics benchmark and the IAEA HTR-10 benchmark, as well as neutron and gamma heating experiments that took place on the NESSUS reactor at Winfrith in the United Kingdom. In each case, validation of WIMS has been obtained by comparison either against measured data, or results provided by other benchmark participants that have been obtained with alternative deterministic or Monte Carlo methods.