Description and Results of a Two-Dimensional Lattice Physics Code Benchmark for the Canadian Pressure Tube Supercritical Water-cooled Reactor (PT-SCWR)

Abstract

Discrepancies have been observed among a number of recent reactor physics studies in support of the PT-SCWR pre-conceptual design, including differences in lattice-level predictions of infinite neutron multiplication factor, coolant void reactivity, and radial power profile. As a first step to resolving these discrepancies, a lattice-level benchmark problem was designed based on the 78-element plutonium-thorium PT-SCWR fuel design under a set of prescribed local conditions. This benchmark problem was modeled with a suite of both deterministic and Monte Carlo neutron transport codes. The results of these models are presented here as the basis of a code-to-code comparison.