Host: The Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers
Name : The 30th International Conference on Nuclear Engineering (ICONE30)
Date : May 21, 2023 - May 26, 2023
Currently, plutonium recycling to PuO2/UO2 mixed oxide fuel is established as the fuel management strategy to decrease the amount of fuel spent in several countries. The neutron physics inside BWR MOX assemblies is a great challenge for calculation models. For this reason, the OECD NEA WPPR published BWR physics benchmark exercise results in 2003, in which several lattice code solutions for a single assembly were compared in order to quantify the differences that arise from nuclear data libraries and lattice codes. The benchmark was dedicated to a single 10x10 BWR MOX fuel assembly lattice, basic neutron transport and burn-up depletion calculation tests were performed. In addition, derived parameters, such as the variation of keff with burn-up and also keff and flux/power distribution with steam void, were compared. About 30 solutions were submitted for the benchmark, three of which were using the MCNP-4B Monte Carlo code using ENDF/B-V cross-section data library. Our neutron transport calculations were performed using the MCNP6 code using ENDF/B-VII.1 cross-section data library. 10x10 BWR MOX fuel assembly lattice calculations analogous to the OECD NEA WPPR benchmark were performed. The comparison of MCNP6 calculation results with the benchmark showed that similar results were obtained, with some discrepancies examined in this paper.
