Extension of Pin-Based Point-Wise Energy Slowing-Down Method for VHTR Fuel with Double Heterogeneity

Abstract

For the resonance treatment of a very high temperature reactors (VHTR) fuel with the double heterogeneity, an extension of the pin-based pointwise energy slowing-down method (PSM) was developed and implemented into DeCART. The proposed method, PSM-double heterogeneity (DH), has an improved spherical unit cell model with an explicit tri-structural isotropic (TRISO) model, a matrix layer, and a moderator for reflecting the moderation effect. The moderator volume was analytically derived using the relation of the Dancoff factor and the mean chord length. In the first step, the pointwise homogenized cross-sections for the compact was obtained after solving the slowing down equation for the spherical unit cell. Then, the shielded cross-section for the homogenized fuel compact was generated using the original PSM. The verification calculations were performed for the fuel pins with various packing fractions, compact sizes, TRISO sizes, and fuel temperatures. Additionally, two fuel block problems with very different sizes were examined and the depletion calculation was carried out for investigating the accuracy of the proposed method. They revealed that the PSM-DH has a good performance in the VHTR problems.