The Reactor Physics Computer Programs in PC's Era

Abstract

The main objective of reactor physics analysis is the evaluation of flux and power distribution over the reactor core. For CANDU reactors sophisticated computer programs, such as FMDP and RFSP, were developed 20 years ago for mainframe computers. These programs were adapted to work on workstations with UNIX or DOS, but they lack a feature that could improve their use and that is "user friendly". For using these programs the users need to deal with a great amount of information contained in sophisticated files. To modify a model is a great challenge. First of all it is needed to bear in mind all the geometrical dimensions and accordingly, to modify the core model to match the new requirements. All these must be done in a line input file.

For a DOS platform, using an average performance PC system, it could be possible:

• To represent and modify all the geometrical and physical parameters in a meaningful way, on screen, using an intuitive, graphic user interface?


• To reduce the real time elapsed in order to perform complex fuel-management analysis "at home"?


• To avoid the re-write the mainframe version of the program?

The author's answer is a fuel-management computer package operating on PC, 3 time faster than on a CDC-Cyber 830 mainframe one (586DX/33MHz/8MbRAM) or 20 time faster (Pentium-PC), respectively.