Full core analysis of IRIS reactor by using MCNPX

E A Amin; I I Bashter; Nabil M Hassan; S S Mustafa

doi:10.1016/j.apradiso.2016.03.031

Full core analysis of IRIS reactor by using MCNPX

Appl Radiat Isot. 2016 Jul:113:70-4. doi: 10.1016/j.apradiso.2016.03.031. Epub 2016 Apr 22.

Authors

E A Amin¹, I I Bashter², Nabil M Hassan², S S Mustafa³

Affiliations

¹ Nuclear & Radiological Regulatory Authority, Cairo, Egypt.
² Faculty of Science, Zagazig University, Zagazig, Egypt.
³ Faculty of Science, Zagazig University, Zagazig, Egypt. Electronic address: sayedsaeed95@yahoo.com.

PMID: 27135607
DOI: 10.1016/j.apradiso.2016.03.031

Abstract

This paper describes neutronic analysis for fresh fuelled IRIS (International Reactor Innovative and Secure) reactor by MCNPX code. The analysis included criticality calculations, radial power and axial power distribution, nuclear peaking factor and axial offset percent at the beginning of fuel cycle. The effective multiplication factor obtained by MCNPX code is compared with previous calculations by HELIOS/NESTLE, CASMO/SIMULATE, modified CORD-2 nodal calculations and SAS2H/KENO-V code systems. It is found that k-eff value obtained by MCNPX is closer to CORD-2 value. The radial and axial powers are compared with other published results carried out using SAS2H/KENO-V code. Moreover, the WIMS-D5 code is used for studying the effect of enriched boron in form of ZrB2 on the effective multiplication factor (K-eff) of the fuel pin. In this part of calculation, K-eff is calculated at different concentrations of Boron-10 in mg/cm at different stages of burnup of unit cell. The results of this part are compared with published results performed by HELIOS code.

Keywords: Axial power; Benchmark 44; IRIS Core; MCNPX code; Nuclear peaking factor; Radial power.