2021 journal article

Secondary-Source Core Reload Modeling with VERA

NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING, 195(3), 320–337.

By: C. Gentry*, B. Collins*, E. Davidson*, G. Davidson*, T. Evans*, A. Godfrey*, S. Hart*, G. Ilas* ...

co-author countries: United States of America 🇺🇸
author keywords: CASL; VERA; secondary source; source range; detector response
Source: Web Of Science
Added: December 11, 2020

The CASL reactor simulation package VERA has been adapted to provide high-fidelity simulation capabilities for modeling source range detector response during subcritical reactor configurations. New features include the activation and shuffling of secondary-source assemblies, use of burned fuel neutron emission data from the ORIGEN depletion solver to the MPACT deterministic neutron transport solver, allowance of user-defined sources in MPACT based on material composition, ability to solve the subcritical source-driven system with neutron multiplication using the MPACT diffusion solver, and transfer of the calculated fission source from MPACT to the continuous-energy Monte Carlo solver Shift for final detector response evaluation using the CADIS methodology for variance reduction. These new capabilities were benchmarked against Watts Bar Unit 1 plant operating data for the first few fuel loading steps and were found to demonstrate excellent agreement with the measured data.