Two-dimensional cross-section sensitivity and uncertainty analysis of the LBM experience at LOTUS

In recent years, the LOTUS fusion blanket facility at IGA-EPF in Lausanne provided a series of irradiation experiments with the Lithium Blanket Module (LBM). The LBM has both realistic fusion blanket and materials and configuration. It is approximately an 80-cm cube, and the breeding material is Li2. Using as the D-T neutron source the Haefely Neutron Generator (HNG) with an intensity of about 5·1012 n/s, a series of experiments with the bare LBM as well as with the LBM preceded by Pb, Be and ThO2 multipliers were carried out. In a recent common Los Alamos/PSI effort, a sensitivity and nuclear data uncertainty path for the modular code system AARE (Advanced Analysis for Reactor Engineering) was developed. This path includes the cross-section code TRAMIX, the one-dimensional finite difference Sn-transport code ONEDANT, the two-dimensional finite element Sn-transport code TRISM, and the one- and two-dimensional sensitivity and nuclear data uncertainty code SENSIBL. For the nucleonic transport calculations, three 187-neutron-group libraries are presently available: MATXS8A and MATXS8F based on ENDF/B-V evaluations and MAT187 based on JEF/EFF evaluations. COVFILS-2, a 74-group library of neutron cross-sections, scattering matrices and covariances, is the data source for SENSIBL; the 74-group structure of COVFILS-2 is a subset of the Los Alamos 187-group structure. Within the framework of the present work a complete set of forward and adjoint two-dimensional TRISM calculations were performed both for the bare, as well as for the Pb- and Be-preceded, LBM using MATXS8 libraries. Then a two-dimensional sensitivity and uncertainty analysis for all cases was performed