SCALE/TRITON Primer: A Primer for Light Water Reactor Lattice Physics Calculations (NUREG/CR-0741, ORNL/TM-2011/21)

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Publication Information

Manuscript Completed: July 2012
Date Published: November 2012

Prepared by:
B. J. Ade

Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Managed by UT-Battelle, LLC
Oak Ridge, TN 37831-6170

I. Frankl, NRC Project Manager

NRC Job Code V6098 (formerly N7098)

Prepared for:
Division of Engineering
Office of Nuclear Regulatory Research
U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission
Washington DC 20555-0001

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Abstract

The SCALE (Standardized Computer Analyses for Licensing Evaluation) computer software system developed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory is widely used and accepted around the world for many radiation transport applications. TRITON (Transport Rigor Implemented with Time-dependent Operation for Neutronic depletion) is a control module developed within the framework of SCALE that enables 2-D and 3-D depletion calculations to be performed by coordinating iterative calls between cross-section processing codes, a neutron transport solver, and the ORIGEN (Oak Ridge Isotope GENeration) point-depletion code. TRITON has the capability to utilize KENO-V.a or KENO-VI 3-D Monte Carlo codes, or the NEWT (New ESC-Based Weighting Transport) 2-D discrete ordinates transport code for the neutron transport solution. This primer focuses on use of the NEWT transport solver with SCALE/TRITON to generate cross sections for light water reactor nodal simulators.

In TRITON, NEWT is used to calculate weighted burnup-dependent cross sections that are employed to update ORIGEN libraries and to provide localized fluxes used for multiple depletion regions. TRITON uses a two-pass cross-section update approach to perform fuel-assembly burnup and branch calculations and generates a database of cross sections and other burnup-dependent physics data that can be used for full-core analysis. To date, cross-section data generated with TRITON/NEWT have been used in a wide variety of applications, including generation of cross sections for core calculations with PARCS (Purdue Advanced Reactor Core Simulator) for NRC analyses, for NESTLE (Nodal Eigenvalue, Steady-State, Transient, Le Core Evaluator) for in-house methods development research, for Bold Venture for High Flux Isotope Reactor (HFIR) low-enriched uranium conversion studies, and for Attila for Advanced Test Reactor core calculations.

The primer is based on SCALE 6.1, which includes the Graphically Enhanced Editing Wizard (GeeWiz) Windows user interface. Each example in this primer uses GeeWiz to provide the framework for preparing input data and viewing output results. Beginning with a Quickstart section, the primer gives an overview of the basic requirements for SCALE/TRITON input and allows the user to quickly run a simple pin cell simulation with SCALE/TRITON. The sections that follow the Quickstart include a list of basic objectives at the beginning that identifies the goal of the section and the individual SCALE/TRITON features that are covered in detail in the sample problems in that section. Upon completion of the primer, a new user should be comfortable using GeeWiz to set up 2-D lattice physics problems in SCALE/TRITON.

The primer provides a starting point for the reactor engineer who uses SCALE/TRITON for lattice physics. Complete descriptions are provided in the SCALE/TRITON manual. Although the primer is self-contained, it is intended as a companion volume to the SCALE/TRITON documentation—the SCALE manual is provided on the SCALE installation DVD. The primer provides specific examples of using SCALE/TRITON for lattice physics analyses; the SCALE/TRITON manual provides detailed information on the use of SCALE/TRITON and all its modules. The primer also contains an appendix with sample input files.