Speaker
Main supervisor (name and email)<br>and his / her institution
Dr R. Prinsloo, rian.prinsloo@necsa.co.za
Level for award<br> (Hons, MSc, <br> PhD, N/A)?
MSc
Please indicate whether<br>this abstract may be<br>published online<br>(Yes / No)
Yes
Abstract content <br> (Max 300 words)<br><a href="http://events.saip.org.za/getFile.py/access?resId=0&materialId=0&confId=34" target="_blank">Formatting &<br>Special chars</a>
Calculational support to the operation of the SAFARI-1 research reactor at Necsa is primarily performed with the in-house developed OSCAR-4 nodal diffusion code. Nodal diffusion methods implement a series of non-linear corrections to the nodal cross-sections. Such corrections are needed since nodal cross-sections are most-often generated in a typical infinite assembly environment, as opposed to the actual core environment. In this work, the impact of one such correction method, termed nodal re-homogenisation, is evaluated for the case of the SAFARI-1 reactor. Furthermore, this is done with respect to a newly proposed OSCAR-4 SAFARI-1 core model. The new model is based in part on nodal cross-sections generated from the Monte Carlo based Serpent code, which supplies a consistent reference transport solution against which the capability of the non-linear model may be measured. The capability of the homogenization model to correct for the environmental error is evaluated on a SAFARI-1 fresh core 2D model, considering both an All-Rods-In (ARI) and an All-Rods-Out (ARO) case. Such analysis has as yet not been applied to research reactors and in this work, we show that the environmental error for a SAFARI-1 core may be as large as 536 pcm and induce a maximum assembly power error of 9.2%. Both cases are then re-calculated, with the re-homogenisation model activated, to illustrate the capability of the re-homogenization correction method.
Would you like to <br> submit a short paper <br> for the Conference <br> Proceedings (Yes / No)?
Yes
Apply to be<br> considered for a student <br> award (Yes / No)?
Yes
