Authors & Affiliations
Bikeev A.S., Daichenkova Yu.S., Kalugin M.A., Shkarovsky D.A.
National Research Centre "Kurchatov Institute", Moscow, Russia
Bikeev A.S. – Head of Software Laboratory, National Research Center "Kurchatov Institute". Contacts: 1, Akademika Kurchatova pl., Moscow, Russia, 123182. Tel: +7(499) 196-96-43; e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
Daichenkova Yu.S. – Engineer, National Research Center "Kurchatov Institute".
Kalugin M.A. – Scientific Director of the Kurchatov Nuclear Power Complex, Dr. Sci. (Tech.), National Research Center "Kurchatov Institute".
Shkarovsky D.A. – Head of the Division of Benchmark Calculations of Nuclear Reactors, Cand. Sci. (Phys. and Math.), National Research Center "Kurchatov Institute".
Abstract
The work solved the problem of determining the optimal parameters of burnup simulations of VVER 1000 core using the MCU Monte Carlo code. To solve the problem, we considered burnup of FA’s infinite lattice. The fuel assembly contains 27 Gd-doped fuel rods – fuel rods with a burning ab-sorber integrated into the fuel in the form of gadolinium oxide. The burnup simulation was carried out with variation of the following parameters: an interpolation type of microscopic cross sections and the neutron fluxes at the time step, the step size of the calculation, and the number of radial zones in the splitting of the Gd-doped fuel rods. In the presence of burnup absorbers in the VVER-1000 core, the necessity of using the predictor-corrector method for calculating burnup by the MCU code is substantiated and justified. The predictor-corrector method uses a linear interpolation of microscopic cross sections and neutron fluxes at a time step to refine the isotopic composition of materials in the system. It is shown that the decrease in the gadolinium burnup rate caused by the increase in the calculation step can be compensated to some extent by a decrease in the number of radial zones in the Gd-doped fuel rod splitting, and thus we can find the optimal combination of the calculation step and the number of radial zones.
Keywords
VVER-1000, infinite lattice of fuel assemblies, burnup, MCU, Monte Carlo, Gd-doped fuel rod, gadolinium, neutron multiplication factor, optimal simulation parameters, calculation pitch, splitting into the radial zones
Article Text (PDF, in Russian)
References
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UDC 621.039.17
Problems of Atomic Science and Technology. Series: Nuclear and Reactor Constants, 2018, issue 4, 4:1
