Nuclear Engineering and Technology

Korean Nuclear Society (한국원자력학회)
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Improvement and verification of the DeCART code for HTGR core physics analysis

  • Received : 2018.04.12
  • Accepted : 2018.09.04
  • Published : 2019.02.25
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Abstract

This paper presents the recent improvements in the DeCART code for HTGR analysis. A new 190-group DeCART cross-section library based on ENDF/B-VII.0 was generated using the KAERI library processing system for HTGR. Two methods for the eigen-mode adjoint flux calculation were implemented. An azimuthal angle discretization method based on the Gaussian quadrature was implemented to reduce the error from the azimuthal angle discretization. A two-level parallelization using MPI and OpenMP was adopted for massive parallel computations. A quadratic depletion solver was implemented to reduce the error involved in the Gd depletion. A module to generate equivalent group constants was implemented for the nodal codes. The capabilities of the DeCART code were improved for geometry handling including an approximate treatment of a cylindrical outer boundary, an explicit border model, the R-G-B checker-board model, and a super-cell model for a hexagonal geometry. The newly improved and implemented functionalities were verified against various numerical benchmarks such as OECD/MHTGR-350 benchmark phase III problems, two-dimensional high temperature gas cooled reactor benchmark problems derived from the MHTGR-350 reference design, and numerical benchmark problems based on the compact nuclear power source experiment by comparing the DeCART solutions with the Monte-Carlo reference solutions obtained using the McCARD code.

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References

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