Transport module based on discrete ordinates for the AZNHEX code

With the undeniable increase in greenhouse gas emissions from the energy sector, generating electricity from clean sources is imperative. As part of the nuclear technology development, reactors whose assemblies have hexagonal cross-sectional geometry, for example SFR reactors, have taken on great importance and to analyze them is necessary to develop reliable computational tools. In this work, a transport module based on the discrete ordinate method was developed for the AZNHEX code of the AZTLAN platform. The steady state transport module was verified with one of the problems proposed by Takeda and Ikeda, the Knk nuclear reactor. The problem consists of three cases: 1) with fully drawn control rods, 2) half inserted control rods, and 3) fully inserted control rods. The requested values are the effective multiplication factor, value of control bars and average flows by region. The results obtained with the S₈ approach were compared with the Monte Carlo code. The k_eff values for case 1 differ by 30 pcm, for case 2 they differ by 173 pcm and for case 3 they differ by 497 pcm; the control bars value has a relative difference of 1170 pcm. Average flows by region show a relative difference of no more than 10%. With the results obtained, the AZNHEXT module can be satisfactorily verified and encouraged to continue with the development of this tool with new modeling problems and calculation capabilities. (author)