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- Alhassan, Erwin
(författare)
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Nuclear data uncertainty propagation for a lead-cooled fast reactor: Combining TMC with criticality benchmarks for improved accuracy
- 2014
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- For the successful deployment of advanced nuclear systems and for optimization of current reactor designs, high quality and accurate nuclear data are required. Before nuclear data can be used in applications, they are first evaluated, benchmarked against integral experiments and then converted into formats usable for applications. The evaluation process in the past was usually done by using differential experimental data which was then complimented with nuclear model calculations. This trend is fast changing because of increase in computational power and tremendous improvements in nuclear reaction theories over the last decade. Since these model codes are not perfect, they are usually validated against a large set of experimental data. However, since these experiments are themselves not exact, the calculated quantities of model codes such as cross sections, angular distributions etc., contain uncertainties. A major source of uncertainty being the input parameters to these model codes. Since nuclear data are used in reactor transport codes asinput for simulations, the output of transport codes ultimately contain uncertainties due to these data. Quantifying these uncertainties is therefore important for reactor safety assessment and also for deciding where additional efforts could be taken to reduce further, these uncertainties.Until recently, these uncertainties were mostly propagated using the generalized perturbation theory. With the increase in computational power however, more exact methods based on Monte Carlo are now possible. In the Nuclear Research and Consultancy Group (NRG), Petten, the Netherlands, a new method called ’Total Monte carlo (TMC)’ has been developed for nuclear data evaluation and uncertainty propagation. An advantage of this approach is that, it eliminates the use of covariances and the assumption of linearity that is used in the perturbation approach.In this work, we have applied the TMC methodology for assessing the impact of nuclear data uncertainties on reactor macroscopic parameters of the European Lead Cooled Training Reactor (ELECTRA). ELECTRA has been proposed within the GEN-IV initiative within Sweden. As part of the work, the uncertainties of plutonium isotopes and americium within the fuel, uncertainties of the lead isotopes within the coolant and some structural materials of importance have been investigated at the beginning of life. For the actinides, large uncertainties were observed in the k-eff due to Pu-238, 239, 240 nuclear data while for the lead coolant, the uncertainty in the k-eff for all the lead isotopes except for Pb-204 were large with significant contribution coming from Pb-208. The dominant contributions to the uncertainty in the k-eff came from uncertainties in the resonance parameters for Pb-208.Also, before the final product of an evaluation is released, evaluated data are tested against a large set of integral benchmark experiments. Since these benchmarks differ in geometry, type, material composition and neutron spectrum, their selection for specific applications is normally tedious and not straight forward. As a further objective in this thesis, methodologies for benchmark selection based the TMC method have been developed. This method has also been applied for nuclear data uncertainty reduction using integral benchmarks. From the results obtained, it was observed that by including criticality benchmark experiment information using a binary accept/reject method, a 40% and 20% reduction in nuclear data uncertainty in the k-eff was achieved for Pu-239 and Pu-240 respectively for ELECTRA.
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| 2. |
- Helgesson, Petter, 1986-
(författare)
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Experimental data and Total Monte Carlo : Towards justified, transparent and complete nuclear data uncertainties
- 2015
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The applications of nuclear physics are many with one important being nuclear power, which can help decelerating the climate change. In any of these applications, so-called nuclear data (ND, numerical representations of nuclear physics) is used in computations and simulations which are necessary for, e.g., design and maintenance. The ND is not perfectly known - there are uncertainties associated with it - and this thesis concerns the quantification and propagation of these uncertainties. In particular, methods are developed to include experimental data in the Total Monte Carlo methodology (TMC). The work goes in two directions. One is to include the experimental data by giving weights to the different "random files" used in TMC. This methodology is applied to practical cases using an automatic interpretation of an experimental database, including uncertainties and correlations. The weights are shown to give a consistent implementation of Bayes' theorem, such that the obtained uncertainty estimates in theory can be correct, given the experimental data. In the practical implementation, it is more complicated. This is much due to the interpretation of experimental data, but also because of model defects - the methodology assumes that there are parameter choices such that the model of the physics reproduces reality perfectly. This assumption is not valid, and in future work, model defects should be taken into account. Experimental data should also be used to give feedback to the distribution of the parameters, and not only to provide weights at a later stage.The other direction is based on the simulation of the experimental setup as a means to analyze the experiments in a structured way, and to obtain the full joint distribution of several different data points. In practice, this methodology has been applied to the thermal (n,α), (n,p), (n,γ) and (n,tot) cross sections of 59Ni. For example, the estimated expected value and standard deviation for the (n,α) cross section is (12.87 ± 0.72) b, which can be compared to the established value of (12.3 ± 0.6) b given in the work of Mughabghab. Note that also the correlations to the other thermal cross sections as well as other aspects of the distribution are obtained in this work - and this can be important when propagating the uncertainties. The careful evaluation of the thermal cross sections is complemented by a coarse analysis of the cross sections of 59Ni at other energies. The resulting nuclear data is used to study the propagation of the uncertainties through a model describing stainless steel in the spectrum of a thermal reactor. In particular, the helium production is studied. The distribution has a large uncertainty (a standard deviation of (17 ± 3) \%), and it shows a strong asymmetry. Much of the uncertainty and its shape can be attributed to the more coarse part of the uncertainty analysis, which, therefore, shall be refined in the future.
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