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A new Monte Carlo transport code RMC has been being developed by Department of Engineering Physics, Tsinghua University, Beijing as a tool for reactor core analysis on high-performance computing platforms. To meet the requirements of reactor analysis, RMC now has such functions as criticality calculation, fixed-source calculation, burnup calculation and kinetics simulations. Some techniques for geometry treatment, new burnup algorithm, source convergence acceleration, massive tally and parallel calculation, and temperature dependent cross sections processing are researched and implemented in RMC to improve the effciency. Validation results of criticality calculation, burnup calculation, source convergence acceleration, tallies performance and parallel performance shown in this paper prove the capabilities of RMC in dealing with reactor analysis problems with good performances.

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The high-temperature reactor pebble-bed module (HTR-PM) is a modular high-temperature gas-cooled reactor demonstration power plant. Its first criticality experiment is scheduled for the latter half of 2021. Before performing the first criticality experiment, a prediction calculation was performed using PANGU code. This paper presents the calculation details for predicting the HTR-PM first criticality using PANGU, including the input model and parameters, numerical results, and uncertainty analysis. The accuracy of the PANGU code was demonstrated by comparing it with the high-fidelity Monte Carlo solution, using the same input configurations. It should be noted that keff can be significantly affected by uncertainties in nuclear data and certain input parameters, making the criticality calculation challenge. Finally, the PANGU is used to predict the critical loading height of the HTR-PM first criticality under design conditions, which will be evaluated in the upcoming experiment later this year.

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