American Nuclear Society
Home

Home / Publications / Journals / Nuclear Technology / Volume 184 / Number 1

A Stylized Three-Dimensional Pressurized Water Reactor Benchmark Problem with UO2 and MOX Fuel

Farzad Rahnema, Ryan Hon, Steven Douglass

Nuclear Technology / Volume 184 / Number 1 / October 2013 / Pages 1-28

Technical Paper / Reactor Physics / Pressurized Water Reactors / dx.doi.org/10.13182/NT11-124

This paper fully describes a whole-core benchmark problem based on a small two-loop pressurized water reactor composed of UO2 and MOX fuel assemblies. The specification includes heterogeneity at both the assembly and the core levels. The geometry and material compositions are fully described, and multigroup material cross-section libraries are provided in the two-group, four-group, and eight-group formats. Detailed Monte Carlo reference solutions including core eigenvalue, assembly-averaged fission distribution, and selected fuel pin fission density distributions are presented for benchmarking diffusion and transport methods. Three different core configurations are presented in this paper, namely, all-rods-out, all-rods-in, and some-rods-in.