A Benchmark Comparison of the Canadian Supercritical Water-cooled Reactor (SCWR) 64-element Fuel Lattice Cell Parameters Using Various Computer Codes

Abstract

Discrepancies in key lattice physics parameters have been observed between various deterministic (e.g. DRAGON and WIMS-AECL) and stochastic (MCNP, KENO) neutron transport codes in modeling previous versions of the Canadian SCWR lattice cell. Further, inconsistencies in these parameters have also been observed when using different nuclear data libraries. In this work, the predictions of k_∞, various reactivity coefficients, and relative ring-averaged pin powers have been re-evaluated using these codes and libraries with the most recent 64-element fuel assembly geometry. A benchmark problem has been defined to quantify the dissimilarities between code results for a number of responses along the fuel channel under prescribed hot full power (HFP), hot zero power (HZP) and cold zero power (CZP) conditions and at several fuel burnups (0, 25 and 50 MW·d·kg^-1 [HM]). Results from deterministic (TRITON, DRAGON) and stochastic codes (MCNP6, KENO V.a and KENO-VI) are presented.