Neutronic analysis of the European sodium cooled fast reactor with Monte Carlo code OpenMC

Abstract

Abstract The sodium-cooled fast reactor is a Generation-IV International Forum recommended technology, with an aim to improve sustainability, safety, and proliferation resistance. To ensure accurate reactor physics calculation and safety analyses, nuclear data libraries require continuous improvement through modifications based on additional measurements, evaluations, and validation studies with criticality experiments. In this work the Sodium-cooled Fast Reactor Uncertainty Analysis in Modeling (SFR-UAM) benchmark served as a basis to assess differences in nuclear data libraries and estimate variability in criticality and power distribution results. The research has been carried out using the OpenMC code and the study presented here covers two SFR models: MOX-3600 and ABR-1000. The neutronic calculation of numerous parameters in fast spectrum systems including effective multiplication factor (keff), effective delayed neutron fraction (βeff), sodium void reactivity (ΔρNa), Doppler constant (ΔρDoppler), and control rod (ρCR) worth were calculated and compared mainly to five libraries: ENDF/B-VII.1, ENDF/B-VIII, JEFF-3.3, JENDL-4.0 and TENDL-2019. In addition, sensitivity calculations using GPT-free method were conducted to understand relevant sensitivities for a given quantity of interest in major isotope/reaction pairs. The major driver of observed uncertainty in keff are found for the high actinide isotopes mainly capture cross section of 239, 240Pu as well as fission reaction of 239Pu.