A STUDY ON JUSTIFICATION OF SRAC 2006 CODE SYSTEM BY BENCHMARKING INTEGRAL PARAMETERS OF TRX AND BAPL CRITICAL LATTICES OF THERMAL REACTORS FOR TRIGA NEUTRONICS CALCULATION

Abstract

The aim of this study is to justify Standard Reactor Analysis Code System (SRAC2006) based on the evaluated nuclear data libraries such as Evaluated Nuclear Data File (ENDF/B-VI.8) and Joint European Fission-Fusion (JEFF- 3.1) for core calculations of 3 MW TRIGA Mark-II Research Reactor at Atomic Energy Research Establishment (AERE), Bangladesh. The study was performed through the analysis of integral parameters of Thermal Reactor Cross section (TRX) and Bettis Atomic Power Laboratory (BAPL) benchmark lattices of thermal reactors. In integral measurements, the thermal reactor lattices TRX-1, TRX-2, BAPL-UO2-1, BAPL-UO2-2 and BAPL-UO2-3 were treated as experimental benchmarks for justifying the SRAC2006 code system. The integral parameters of the said lattices are calculated using the collision probability transport code SRAC-PIJ of the SRAC2006 code system at room temperature 20 0C based on the above libraries. The calculated integral parameters are compared to the measured values as well as the Monte Carlo Nuclear Particle (MCNP) values based on the Chinese Evaluated Nuclear Data Library (CENDL-3.0). It was found that the calculated results show a good agreement among the said data files as well as the experimental and the MCNP results. To enrich this justification study the group constants (in SRAC format) such as activation cross-section, fission cross-section, nu-fission cross-section, total cross-section, diffusion coefficients, absorption cross-section and scattering cross-section in fast and thermal energy range between the above data files for TRX and BAPL lattices were calculated using the SRAC-PIJ code in fixed source mode. By comparing the group constants it was found that the group constants were well consistent with each other. Therefore, this paper reflects the justification study of the SRAC2006 code system and it will be useful to meet up nuclear data for further core safety calculations of 3 MW TRIGA Mark-II research reactors at AERE, Savar, Dhaka, Bangladesh.