KENO calculations for Purnima and Kamini reactors

The Monte Carlo Code KENO-IV along with the 16-group Hansen-Roach Cross section set was extensively used for obtaining the Keff of various core-reflector configurations of the three reactors PURNIMA-II, PURNIMA-III and KAMINI. Apart from Keff the reactivity worths of safety control plates, worth of reflector modules and fuel subassemblies were also estimated using KENO Code. The standard deviation of Keff calculations were 1%, 0.5% and 0.2% for PURNIMA-II, PURNIMA-III and KAMINI respectively. The experimental measurements showed the calculations to be accurate, almost all the measurements falling within one standard deviation. The reactivity worths of fuel subassemblies and safety control plates were also estimated reasonably well. Due to large statistical uncertainty in the small reactivity worth calculations, the method failed to give any meaningful value for the small reflector module worths. This paper discusses in brief the details of the calculations carried out