Assessment of the Reliability of the CNEN’s Calculational Methods for the Neutronic Design of PWRs

Methods have been formulated to treat the rod cluster control for present-generation presurized water reactors within the computational codes available at Comitato Nazionale per l’Energia Nucleare (CNEN) for light water reactors. The reliability of these procedures has been verified by comparing the calculated results with the most significant experimental data available from measurements performed by the Centre d’Étude de l’Énergie Nucléaire-Studiecentrum Voor Kernenergie (Belgian Plutonium Recycling Program), Babcock & Wilcox (Lumped Burnable Poison Program), Westinghouse, and CNEN (Italian Nuclear Ship Propulsion Program). Reactivity and power distributions have been evaluated for a wide set of experimental configurations including several types of absorbing rods (e.g., B₄C, Pyrex, and Ag-In-Cd alloy) with different radii in different lattices made of various fuel materials (e.g., UO₂, PuO₂, and UO₂/PuO₂).