Analysis of PROTEUS Phase II Experiments Performed Using the AARE Modular System and JEF-Based Libraries

The capability of the Advanced Analysis of Reactor Engineering (AARE) modular code system and JEF-1-based nuclear data libraries to analyze light water high converter reactor (LWHCR) lattices is investigated by calculating the wet and dry cells of the PROTEUS-L WHCR phase II experiment. The results are compared to those obtained using several cell codes. Main features of the AARE code system, such as the self-shielding of resonance cross sections in the whole energy range, the generation of adequate fission source spectra, and the efficiency of the elastic removal correction, are investigated. In particular, it is shown that AARE results for the k_∞ void coefficient agree very well with the experiment, whereas other codes give larger deviations.