Nuclear Engineering ETDs

Publication Date

Spring 4-8-2024

Abstract

This research aimed to improve the benchmark coverage of the International Criticality Safety Benchmark Evaluation Project (ICSBEP) handbook and the International Reactor Physics Experiment Evaluation Project (IRPhEP) with respect to High-Assay, Low-Enriched Uranium Fuel (HALEU). This was accomplished by creating a benchmark of the University of New Mexico’s Aerojet General Nucleonics model 201-M reactor and submitting it to the ICSBEP. This research then aimed to quantify to what extent this benchmark improves coverage of the benchmark suites for HALEU and TRISO fuel applications. This investigation utilized WHISPER, TSUNAMI-IP, and TSURFER with 36 application cases developed in SCALE and 2,929 experiments to compare against those application cases. The UNM AGN-201M performed better than 2,929 experiments on 8 of the 36 applications. It further lowered TSURFER’s cross-section adjustment by 3.050E-04% ± 7.090E-04%, and it lowered the uncertainty in these adjustments by 1.041E-02% ± 2.706E-02%.

Keywords

agn-201m, benchmarking, validation, nuclear criticality safety, icsbep

Sponsors

United States Department of Energy

Document Type

Dissertation

Language

English

Degree Name

Nuclear Engineering

Level of Degree

Doctoral

Department Name

Nuclear Engineering

First Committee Member (Chair)

Christopher M. Perfetti

Second Committee Member

Forrest B. Brown

Third Committee Member

Robert D. Busch

Fourth Committee Member

Douglas G. Bowen

Fifth Committee Member

Amir Ali

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