Macroscopic Cross Sections Generation by Monte Carlo Code MCS for Fast Reactor Analysis

Abstract

Recent researches have become more interested in the feasibility of using Monte Carlo (MC) code to generate multi-group (MG) cross sections (XSs) for fast reactor analysis using nodal diffusion codes. The current study, therefore, presents a brief methodology for MG XSs generation by the in-house UNIST MC code MCS, which can be compatibly utilized in nodal diffusion codes, PARCS and RAST-K. The applicability of the methodology is quantified on the sodium fast reactor (SFR) ABR-1000 design with a metallic fuel from the OECD/NEA SRF benchmark. The few-group XSs generated by MCS with a two-dimensional (2D) fuel assembly geometry are well consistent with those of SERPENT 2. Furthermore, the simulation of beginning-of-cycle (BOC) steady-state three-dimensional (3D) whole-core problem with PARCS and RAST-K is conducted using the generated 24-group XSs by MCS. The nodal diffusion solutions, including the core keff, power profiles and various of reactivity parameters, are compared to reference whole-core results obtained by MC code MCS. Overall, the code-to-code comparison indicates a reasonable agreement between deterministic and stochastic codes, with the difference in keff less than 100 pcm and the root-mean-square (RMS) error in assembly power less than 1.15%. Therefore, it is successfully demonstrated that the employment of the MG XSs generation by MCS for nodal diffusion codes is feasible to accurately perform analyses for fast reactors.