Verifications and applications of NECP-Bamboo2.0 for PWR whole-core multi-cycle pin-by-pin simulation

In 2018, the NECP Laboratory at Xi'an Jiaotong University (XJTU) published the pin-by-pin two-step calculation code system NECP-Bamboo2.0 for the physics analysis of Pressurized Water Reactors (PWRs). Previously, NECP-Bamboo2.0 was primarily verified for its neutronics analysis capabilities. The code system has recently been enhanced for practical reactor physics analysis of commercial PWR cores. In this paper, several modifications of NECP-Bamboo2.0 regarding its improvement in functionality are introduced. Then, the pin-by-pin calculation capability of the code system was verified using the 2D and 3D VERA benchmark problems. Comparisons with reference solutions provided by high-fidelity codes demonstrated the computational accuracy of NECP-Bamboo2.0. Additionally, NECP-Bamboo2.0 was applied to the multi-cycle physics analysis of two commercial PWR cores, CNP300 and CNP1000. Comparisons with the measurements regarding the startup physics tests and the depletion processes illustrate the reliability of NECP-Bamboo2.0 in practical pin-by-pin reactor physics analysis and highlight the improvements of the pin-by-pin method over the assembly-homogenized coarse-mesh diffusion method.