Nuclear data sensitivity and uncertainty for the Canadian supercritical water-cooled reactor II: Full core analysis

Uncertainties in nuclear data are a fundamental source of uncertainty in reactor physics calculations. To determine their contribution to uncertainties in calculated reactor physics parameters, a nuclear data sensitivity and uncertainty study is performed on the Canadian supercritical water reactor (SCWR) concept. The nuclear data uncertainty contributions to the neutron multiplication factor k(eff) are 6.31 mk for the SCWR at the beginning of cycle (BOC) and 6.99 mk at the end of cycle (EOC). Both of these uncertainties have a statistical uncertainty of 0.02 mk. The nuclear data uncertainty contributions to Coolant Void Reactivity (CVR) are 1.0 mk and 0.9 mk for BOC and EOC, respectively, both with statistical uncertainties of 0.1 mk. The nuclear data uncertainty contributions to other reactivity parameters range from as low as 3% of to as high as ten times the values of the reactivity coefficients. The largest contributors to the uncertainties in the reactor physics parameters are Pu-239, Th-232, H-2, and isotopes of zirconium. Crown Copyright (C) 2014 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.