Simulation of TREAT cores using high-fidelity neutronics code PROTEUS

Two TREAT experimental cores, Minimum Critical Core (MinCC) and M8CAL, were simulated for verification and validation tests of PROTEUS. Due to the significant neutron streaming effect in the test problems via air cooling channels and hodoscope slot, the MOCEX solver of PROTEUS was used for the simulation. For systematic verification tests, 2D and 3D single fuel element, partial core, and whole-core problems were constructed and simulated, aiming at 3D whole-core calculations with explicit geometry configurations. Meshes were generated using the PROTEUS mesh toolkit combined with CUBIT. Multigroup cross sections were generated from the Serpent Monte Carlo code based on the 11 energy group structure to focus on the verification of the transport solution accuracy of PROTEUS. The simulation results for various cases based on MinCC and M8CAL indicated that the PROTEUS eigenvalues and power distributions were in very good agreement with Serpent solutions. (authors)