A STUDY ON JUSTIFICATION OF SRAC 2006 CODE SYSTEM BY BENCHMARKING INTEGRAL PARAMETERS OF TRX AND BAPL CRITICAL LATTICES OF THERMAL REACTORS FOR TRIGA NEUTRONICS CALCULATION

Abstract

The aim of this study is to justify Standard Reactor Analysis Code System (SRAC2006) based on the evaluated
nuclear data libraries such as Evaluated Nuclear Data File (ENDF/B-VI.8) and Joint European Fission-Fusion (JEFF-
3.1) for core calculations of 3 MW TRIGA Mark-II Research Reactor at Atomic Energy Research Establishment
(AERE), Bangladesh. The study was performed through the analysis of integral parameters of Thermal Reactor
Cross section (TRX) and Bettis Atomic Power Laboratory (BAPL) benchmark lattices of thermal reactors. In integral
measurements, the thermal reactor lattices TRX-1, TRX-2, BAPL-UO2-1, BAPL-UO2-2 and BAPL-UO2-3 were
treated as experimental benchmarks for justifying the SRAC2006 code system. The integral parameters of the said
lattices are calculated using the collision probability transport code SRAC-PIJ of the SRAC2006 code system at room
temperature 20 0C based on the above libraries. The calculated integral parameters are compared to the measured
values as well as the Monte Carlo Nuclear Particle (MCNP) values based on the Chinese Evaluated Nuclear Data
Library (CENDL-3.0). It was found that the calculated results show a good agreement among the said data files
as well as the experimental and the MCNP results. To enrich this justification study the group constants (in SRAC
format) such as activation cross-section, fission cross-section, nu-fission cross-section, total cross-section, diffusion
coefficients, absorption cross-section and scattering cross-section in fast and thermal energy range between the above
data files for TRX and BAPL lattices were calculated using the SRAC-PIJ code in fixed source mode. By comparing
the group constants it was found that the group constants were well consistent with each other. Therefore, this paper
reflects the justification study of the SRAC2006 code system and it will be useful to meet up nuclear data for further
core safety calculations of 3 MW TRIGA Mark-II research reactors at AERE, Savar, Dhaka, Bangladesh.