Development of a point-kinetic verification scheme for nuclear reactor applications
Journal article, 2017

In this paper, a new method that can be used for checking the proper implementation of time- or frequency-dependent neutron transport models and for verifying their ability to recover some basic reactor physics properties is proposed. This method makes use of the application of a stationary perturbation to the system at a given frequency and extraction of the point-kinetic component of the system response. Even for strongly heterogeneous systems for which an analytical solution does not exist, the point-kinetic component follows, as a function of frequency, a simple analytical form. The comparison between the extracted point-kinetic component and its expected analytical form provides an opportunity to verify and validate neutron transport solvers. The proposed method is tested on two diffusion-based codes, one working in the time domain and the other working in the frequency domain. As long as the applied perturbation has a non-zero reactivity effect, it is demonstrated that the method can be successfully applied to verify and validate time- or frequency-dependent neutron transport solvers. Although the method is demonstrated in the present paper in a diffusion theory framework, higher order neutron transport methods could be verified based on the same principles.

Time-dependent neutron transport

Computational verification and validation

Neutron noise

Neutron fluctuations

Diffusion theory

Point-kinetics

Frequency-dependent neutron transport

Author

Christophe Demaziere

Chalmers, Physics, Subatomic and Plasma Physics

Victor Dykin

Chalmers, Physics, Subatomic and Plasma Physics

Klas Jareteg

Chalmers, Physics, Subatomic and Plasma Physics

Journal of Computational Physics

0021-9991 (ISSN) 1090-2716 (eISSN)

Vol. 339 396-411

Subject Categories

Other Engineering and Technologies

Other Physics Topics

Areas of Advance

Energy

DOI

10.1016/j.jcp.2017.03.020

More information

Latest update

4/17/2018