SCOPE2: object-oriented parallel code for multi-group diffusion/transport calculations in three-dimensional fine-mesh reactor core geometry - 12A-01

A parallel production core calculation code SCOPE2 has been developed. SCOPE2 performs multigroup diffusion/transport calculations for nuclear design in 3-D fine-mesh (i.e. pin-by-pin) geometry and runs on parallel environments such as PC clusters. The multi-group diffusion/SP₃ transport equations are solved by the Red/Black iterative method within the framework of the conventional finite difference or the advanced nodal method without non-linear iterations. In this paper, the response matrix formulation of the SP₃ equation in the advanced nodal method is derived followed by the derivation of an analytic solution of the flux moments in the SP₃ transport equations. Numerical results in assembly and PWR core geometry showed good accuracy of the present method. SCOPE2 gave almost perfect scalability for a large problem with a PC cluster of 16 Pentium-4 processors connected with 100BASE-T network. A typical 9-group depletion calculation in the 3-D fine-mesh full-core geometry of 3 loop-type PWR was performed in 4.4 hours with 16 processors. (author)