Two examples of recent advances in sensitivity calculations

Abstract

This article reviews two recently established methods to compute sensitivities of some core parameters to basic nuclear data. First, perturbation theory offers an efficient way to compute sensitivities to nuclear parameters in continuous energy transport simulations: making use of the Iterated Fission Probability method, and by coupling the Monte Carlo code TRIPOLI-4® to the nuclear evaluation code CONRAD, we were able to compute the sensitivity of core reactivity to nuclear parameters for simple ICSBEP benchmarks. Second, using a multipoint description of a nuclear system and deterministic transport calculations the sensitivity of the state eigenvector of the system to multigroup nuclear data is computed using simple and fast partial importance calculations.

Assimilation of integral experiments on high-energy nuclear parameters

“…However, these were limited to the influence of cross-sections, and continuous energy calculations were limited to specific nuclear parameters (resonance parameters). A recent coupling [3] between the nuclear reaction code CONRAD [4] and a development version of the stochastic code TRIPOLI-4 ® [5] allows calculating full sensitivities of integral experiment reactivity to nuclear parameters, with contributions from all nuclear data, without energy and models restrictions [6,7]. With such tool, we are now able to adjust nuclear parameters and phenomenological models on integral experiment results, and especially here, criticality experiments reactivity.…”