Validation of the PWR-core physics analysis software NECP-Bamboo based on NPP measurements

NECP-Bamboo is a PWR-core physics analysis software developed by the Nuclear Engineering Computational Physics (NECP) Laboratory at Xi'an Jiaotong University based on the improved two-step methodology. There are no engineering turning approximations so different PWR cores can be calculated using the same methodology setup. This paper calculated and summarized 64 cycles of 7 kinds of PWR cores. The fuel enrichments range from 1.8% to 4.45%, while burnable poisons contain borosilicate glass and gadolinium-doped fuels. The lattice structures in fuel assembly are either 17 × 17 or 15 × 15. Notably, the number of fuel assemblies in each core encompasses 121, 157, 177, or 193. Calculated parameters were compared with the corresponding Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) measurements, including critical boron concentration, temperature coefficient, rod cluster control assembly worth in the start-up tests, together with the critical boron concentration, and assembly radial relative power distributions in the power operation periods. All the statistical errors agree well with the corresponding acceptable safety limits.