Depletion calculations based on perturbations. Application to the study of a REP-like assembly at beginning of cycle with TRIPOLI-4®. (May 2015)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Dieudonné, Cyril; Dumonteil, Eric; Malvagi, Fausto; Diop, Cheikh
• Is Part Of: Annals of nuclear energy. Volume 79(2015:May)
• Page Start: 43
• Page End: 50
• Publication Date: 2015-05
• Subjects: Neutronic -- Monte-Carlo simulation -- Burnup/depletion calculation -- Perturbation -- Correlated sampling method -- TRIPOLI-4®; Nuclear energy -- Periodicals; Nuclear engineering -- Periodicals; 621.4805
• DOI: 10.1016/j.anucene.2014.12.020
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0306-4549

Abstract

Highlights: Monte-Carlo burnup simulations are often used as reference calculations. Monte-Carlo burnup simulations suffers however of prohibitive calculation times. This paper proposes a method to accelerate Monte-Carlo burnup codes. This method factorizes the transport steps using the correlated sampling method. Abstract: Monte-Carlo burnup calculations are nowadays the reference method to obtain fuel inventories in reactor configurations. Their main drawback is the very long computing time associated with the calculation. A method is presented here which attempts to speed up the calculation by replacing full simulations by perturbation calculations based on correlated sampling. The method is tested in a PWR assembly configuration and numerical results are given for the figure of merit. These results show that a speed-up of up to a factor of 5 can be achieved.