BENCHMARKING OF THE SCALE CODE PACKAGE AND MULTI-GROUP CROSS SECTION LIBRARIES FOR ANALYSIS OF LEAD-COOLED FAST REACTOR

The Generation IV [1] International forum identified six advanced reactor concepts and related fuel cycles along with the R&D programs necessary to achieve the four key goals: (1) sustainability, (2) safety and reliability, (3) economics, (4) proliferation resistance and physical protection. Among these six promising reactor concepts, the lead-cooled fast reactor (LFR) has been selected for development by EURATOM, which in 2006 decided to finance the European Lead Cooled System (ELSY) project. The aim of the project is to demonstrate the possibility to design a safe and competitive lead-cooled fast power reactor using simple engineering solutions. This paper demonstrates the use of the code package SCALE5.1 and its NEWT/TRITON modules [3] for preliminary neutronic core analysis of a LFR within Generation IV Nuclear Energy systems program. More specifically, the analysis of the reference design of the ELSY-600 open square fuel assembly is presented. In particular, the use of ENDF/B-V and ENDF/B-VI.7 and multigroup energy structure was investigated. The homogenized cross sections calculated for the ELSY fuel assembly 2D model have been evaluated and compared to the results obtained with calculations performed with the deterministic code ERANOS/ECCO using JEFF2.2 cross section library. A good agreement has been observed in the energy range of interests, and generally for energy above 1eV.