Development of a cross-section interface for PARCS

Paper in proceeding, 2006

This paper deals with the development of an interface allowing feeding the PARCS core simulator with realistic material constants corresponding to any heterogeneous PWR core. Since the CASMO-4/SIMULATE-3 code package is predominantly used in Sweden, such an interface is based on the use of the binary library file created by CASMO-4 and read by SIMULATE-3. This binary library file contains the results of the 2-dimensional transport calculations of all the fuel/reflector assemblies loaded in a specific core and for all the possible operating conditions. More precisely, SIMULATE-3 is used for reading this file and for interpolating the data at the operating points necessary for representing the dependence of the material constants in PARCS. The full dependence of the material constants on history variables, instantaneous variables, and exposure can thus be reconstructed in a consistent way with the PARCS formalism. Such an interface is demonstrated to accurately represent the actual dependence of the material constants.