Published April 2009 | Version v1
Journal article

The impact of 238U resonance elastic scattering approximations on thermal reactor Doppler reactivity

  • 1. Studsvik Scandpower Inc., Idaho Falls (United States)

Description

The effects of accurate modeling of neutron scattering in 238U resonances are analyzed for typical light water reactor (LWR) and next generation nuclear plant (NGNP) lattices. An exact scattering kernel is formulated and implemented in a newly developed Monte Carlo code, MCSD (Monte Carlo slowing down), which solves a neutron slowing down in an infinite homogeneous medium and is used to generate resonance integral data used in the CASMO-5 lattice physics code. It is shown that the exact scattering kernel increases LWR Doppler coefficients by ∼10% relative to the traditional assumption of asymptotic elastic downscatter for 238U resonances. These resonance modeling improvements are shown to decrease hot full power eigenvalues by ∼200 pcm for LWRs and ∼450 pcm for NGNPs

Availability note (English)

Available from http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.anucene.2008.11.026

Additional details

Identifiers

DOI
10.1016/j.anucene.2008.11.026;
PII
S0306-4549(08)00308-3;

Publishing Information

Journal Title
Annals of Nuclear Energy (Oxford)
Journal Volume
36
Journal Issue
3
Journal Page Range
p. 274-280
ISSN
0306-4549
CODEN
ANENDJ

Conference

Title
Nuclear power, a sustainable resource: 2008 international conference on the physics of reactors
Acronym
PHYSOR 2008
Dates
14-19 Sep 2008
Place
Interlaken (Switzerland)

Optional Information

Copyright
Copyright (c) 2008 Elsevier Science B.V., Amsterdam, The Netherlands, All rights reserved.