Validation of SCALE and the TRITON Depletion Sequence for Gas-Cooled Reactor Analysis

The very-high-temperature reactor (VHTR) is an advanced reactor concept that uses graphite-moderated fuel and helium gas as a coolant. At present there are two primary VHTR reactor designs under consideration for development: in the pebble-bed reactor, a core is loaded with 'pebbles' consisting of 6 cm diameter spheres, while in a high-temperature gas-cooled reactor, fuel rods are placed within prismatic graphite blocks. In both systems, fuel elements (spheres or rods) are comprised of tristructural-isotropic (TRISO) fuel particles. The TRISO particles are either dispersed in the matrix of a graphite pebble for the pebble-bed design or molded into compacts/rods that are then inserted into the hexagonal graphite blocks for the prismatic concept. Two levels of heterogeneity exist in such fuel designs: (1) microspheres of TRISO particles dispersed in a graphite matrix of a cylindrical or spherical shape, and (2) neutron interactions at the rod-to-rod or sphere-to-sphere level. Such double heterogeneity (DH) provides a challenge to multigroup cross-section processing methods, which must treat each level of heterogeneity separately. A new capability to model doubly heterogeneous systems was added to the SCALE system in the release of Version 5.1. It was included in the control sequences CSAS and CSAS6, which use the Monte Carlo codes KENO V.a and KENO-VI, respectively, for three-dimensional neutron transport analyses and in the TRITON sequence, which uses the two-dimensional lattice physics code NEWT along with both versions of KENO for transport and depletion analyses. However, the SCALE 5.1 version of TRITON did not support the use of the DH approach for depletion. This deficiency has been addressed, and DH depletion will be available as an option in the upcoming release of SCALE 6. At present Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) staff are developing a set of calculations that may be used to validate SCALE for DH calculations. This paper discusses the results of calculations completed to date and the direction of future validation work.