Benchmark Calculations for the CE Critical Experiments by KARMA 1.1 with ENDF/B-VI R8 and ENDF/B-VII R0

Abstract

Benchmark calculations for the CE critical experiments were performed by using the 2-dimensional transport code KARMA for which multi-group cross sections and resonance data were prepared by the KAERI library processing procedure. This study includes the 5 CE critical experiments performed by Westinghouse. The CE critical experiments consisted of a 30×30 square fuel rod array of 2.72 wt% ^(235)U enriched UO2 in zircaloy-2 clad representative of the CE 14×14 fuel assembly design. The geometrical bucklings were measured for the 2-dimensional analysis and the fission rate distributions were also measured in the critical experiments. Two different evaluated data libraries including ENDF/B-VI R8 and ENDF/B-VII R0 were used to prepare multi-group cross sections for the KARMA benchmark calculations in order to see the differences between these two libraries. It was shown that the calculated eigenvalues with ENDF/B-VII R0 were much closer to the critical than those with ENDF/B-VI R8, and although the fission rate distribution with ENDF/B-VI R8 is better than those with ENDF/B-VII R0, both fission rate distributions were well predicted when considering the measurement uncertainty.