On the feasibility of a homogenised multi-group Monte Carlo method in reactor analysis

The use of homogenised multi-group cross sections to speed up Monte Carlo calculation has been studied to some extent, but the method is not widely implemented in modern calculation codes. This paper presents a calculation scheme in which homogenised material parameters are generated using the PSG continuous-energy Monte Carlo reactor physics code and used by MORA, a new full-core Monte Carlo code entirely based on homogenisation. The theory of homogenisation and its implementation in the Monte Carlo method are briefly introduced. The PSG-MORA calculation scheme is put to practice in two fundamentally different test cases: a small sodium-cooled fast reactor (JOYO) and a large PWR core. It is shown that the homogenisation results in a dramatic increase in efficiency. The results are in a reasonably good agreement with reference PSG and MCNP5 calculations, although fission source convergence becomes a problem in the PWR test case. (authors)