Design and validation of a broad-group shielding library for fast reactors by using particle swarm optimization

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Abstract

To improve the efficiency of shielding calculation for fast reactors, the process of generating a broad-group shielding library for fast reactors was constructed by using advanced burner test reactors (ABTR) to construct the 1-D fast reactor model. To obtain energy broad-group structures appropriate for fast reactor shielding, particle swarm optimization (PSO) was used. Five structures were optimized, including 47-group, 38-group, 29-group, 25-group and 20-group. The corresponding broad-group shielding libraries using these optimized structures were generated and validated by four shielding problems for fast reactors. Numerical results show that the accuracy of NECL-EF47 with the 47-group structure was the best. The accuracy of NECL-EF25 is not as high as NECL-EF47, whereas NECL-EF25 with the 25-group structure is computationally more efficient than NECL-EF47 because of its smaller number of energy group. Conclusively, they are all suitable for shielding calculation for fast reactors and users can make the choice based on demand.

Original languageEnglish
Article number109251
JournalAnnals of Nuclear Energy
Volume175
DOIs
StatePublished - 15 Sep 2022

Keywords

  • ABTR
  • Broad-group shielding library
  • Fast reactor
  • Particle swarm optimization
  • SINBAD

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