Neutron-kinetic and thermo-hydraulic uncertainties in the study of Kalinin-3 benchmark

Abstract

Abstract The effects of nuclear data covariance on important reactor parameters are investigated. The analyses are performed on the base of the OECD/NEA coolant transient Benchmark (K-3) on measured data at Kalinin-3 Nuclear Power Plant (NPP). For this purpose the GRS uncertainty and sensitivity software package XSUSA is applied to propagate uncertainties in nuclear data libraries to the full core coupled transient calculations. Moreover, based on the previous thermo-hydraulic studies a set of most important thermo-hydraulic parameters is chosen and added to the uncertain input vector. A statistically representative set of coupled ATHLET-PARCS code steady state calculations is analyzed and both integral and local output quantities are compared with the measurements available in the benchmark. The work is a step forward in establishing a “best-estimate calculations in combination with performing uncertainty analysis” methodology for coupled full core calculations.