Advancement of G T-SCALE and the construction of a graphical user interface

The issue of advanced reactor concepts with complex core geometries and advanced fuel compositions is being addressed through the development of a new computational methodology based on the coupling of two existing state-of-the-art methodologies - GTRAN2 and SCALE 4.3. The resulting methodology encompasses advanced features in analyzing new designs and in simplifying user-code interactions. The advanced nuclear features include an exact 2 D representation of a complete fuel assembly (or several assemblies), while preserving the heterogeneity of each of its pin cells, flexibility in the energy group structure, a comprehensive cross-section library and material data base, and accurate burnup calculations. A complex graphical user interface along with a graphical presentation of output data make up the user-interaction features of G T-SCALE. Extensive benchmarking of the G T-SCALE is under way, and some results and comparison with other code systems are presented in this paper. (author). 5 refs., 1 fig., 4 tabs