Evaluation of Effective Prompt Neutron Lifetime for Pressurized Water Reactors

The lifetime of prompt neutrons is a basic characteristic of reactors since it determines the neutron kinetics of the reactor in all transient processes. This paper focuses on calculation of the prompt neutron lifetime for pressurized water reactors (PWRs). The calculation was performed using two independent methods. The first method uses the fundamental definition of the neutron lifetime with adjoint weighting that has recently been included in MCNPX. The second method is the 1/v absorber insertion method, where a 1/v absorber such as ¹⁰B is placed uniformly throughout a nuclear reactor and the change in reactivity is calculated. This prompt neutron lifetime is then extracted from the changes in the reactivity as the ¹⁰B concentration approaches zero. The results of the two methods are compared together at two points in the operation cycle [at beginning of cycle (BOC) and at end of cycle (EOC)]. The values of the prompt neutron lifetime as calculated with MCNPX are compared to values calculated with another independent method, and the results are in reasonable agreement with each other. Also, these results compared with the PWR final safety analysis report show good agreement. In the two methods of calculation, the prompt neutron lifetime was determined to be longer at EOC when compared to that at BOC.