Analysis of a basic core performance for FBR core nuclear design. 3

The spatial distribution of reaction rates in the ZPPR-13A, having an axially heterogeneous core, has been analyzed. The ZPPR-13A core is treated as a 2-dimensional RZ configuration consisting of a homogeneous core. The analysis is performed by utilizing both probabilistic and deterministic treatments. The probabilistic treatment is performed with the Monte Carlo Code MVP running with continuous energy variable. By comparing the results obtained by both treatments and reviewing the calculation method of effective resonance cross sections, for deterministic treatment, utilized for the reaction rate distributions, it is revealed that the present treatment of effective resonance cross sections is not accurate, since there are observed effects due to dependence on energy group number or energy group width, and on anisotropic scattering. To utilize multi-band method for calculating effective resonance cross sections, widely used by the European researchers, the computer code GROUPIE is installed and the performance of the code is confirmed. Although, in order to improve effective resonance cross sections accuracy, the thermal neutron reactor standard code system SRAC-95 was introduced last year in which the ultra-fine group spectrum calculation module PEACO worked specially under the restriction that number of nuclei having resonance cross section, in any zone, should be less than three, because collision probabilities were obtained by an interpolation method. This year, the module is improved so that these collision probabilities are directly calculated, and by this improvement the highly accurate effective resonance cross sections below the energy of 40.868 keV can be calculated for whole geometrical configurations considered. To extend the application range of the module PEACO, the cross sections of sodium and structure material nuclei are prepared so that they are also represented as ultra-fine group cross sections. By such modifications of cross section library, effective resonance cross sections of sodium and structure material nuclei can be calculated with high degree of accuracy and also it is possible to treat the mutual interference effect of resonances among heavy nuclei, and sodium and structural material nuclei with satisfactory degree of accuracy. (author)