A SIMPLIFIED SMAHTR BENCHMARK PROBLEM SET

Georgia Institute of Technology North Ave NW, Atlanta, GA

kreed34@gatech.edu
farzad@gatech.edu

Published online: 22 February 2021

Abstract

The Small, Modular Advanced High Temperature Reactor (SmAHTR) is a preconceptual design for a fluoride salt-cooled small modular reactor (SMR) [1]. In this paper, a stylized 2D benchmark problem set has been created based on SmAHTR. Certain gaps and considerations in burnable poison and control rod content were unspecified/undetermined in the preconceptual design, but those gaps were filled for the stylized problem set. With those features, this problem set could then be used for benchmarking neutron transport methods as well as its low order methods in 2D single assembly and full core configurations.

For this benchmark set, continuous energy Monte Carlo calculations were performed. Those calculations provided k_eff values of 0.9459 (± 11 pcm) and 1.1436 (± 12 pcm) in the full core configuration with all the control rods fully inserted and withdrawn, respectively. The single assembly calculations yielded an eigenvalue, k_inf, of 0.9987 (± 15 pcm) and 1.2117 (± 15 pcm) with all of the control rods either inserted or removed, respectively. In the full core configuration, the worth of all the control rods and burnable poison particles were determined to be 197.6 (± 0.16) mk and 311.6 (± 0.23) mk, respectively. The corresponding results in the single assembly configurations are 213 (± 0.21) mk and 337.4 (± 0.20) mk, respectively. A near-critical configuration was also determined for the reactor by inserting control rods in some assemblies, thus providing a case with a k_eff value of 0.9909 (± 12 pcm).