Sensitivity and Uncertainty Analysis of the SCWR Core Along Its Cycle With the Inclusion of Control Blades and Burnable Absorbers

Abstract

The assessment of nuclear reactor uncertainties has long been a topic of study, and is becoming increasingly important in the safety and economical design of nuclear power plants. Integral response uncertainties, such as ∆ke_ff, can be computed using adjoint-based perturbation theory which has been implemented in KENO/TSUNAMI. The underlying nuclide and reaction sensitivities and uncertainties in the SCWR core with the inclusion of control blades and burnable absorbers, over a cycle, were the topic of study for this paper. Full core SCWR KENO models at various burnups were generated using TRITON to produce lattice burnups with control blade branches and PARCS to determine core wide burnup evolution and control blade insertions. The highest sensitivities as well as uncertainties in the SCWR core were found to be plutonium reactions. It was also found that ∆ke_ff decreases slightly throughout the cycle from 0.84 to 0.8 ∆k/k.