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ANS Student Conference 2025
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El Salvador: Looking to nuclear
In 2022, El Salvador’s leadership decided to expand its modest, mostly hydro- and geothermal-based electricity system, which is supported by expensive imported natural gas and diesel generation. They chose to use advanced nuclear reactors, preferably fueled by thorium-based fuels, to power their civilian efforts. The choice of thorium was made to inform the world that the reactor program was for civilian purposes only, and so they chose a fuel that was plentiful, easy to source and work with, and not a proliferation risk.
Shikun Xu, Lingyi Qu, Tao Yu, Jinsen Xie, Ji Tong, Zining Ni, Nianbiao Deng, Hiroshi Watabe
Nuclear Technology | Volume 211 | Number 2 | February 2025 | Pages 258-272
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2024.2324513
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The fundamental prompt neutron delayed constant α, the effective delayed neutron fraction , and the effective neutron generation time are important for accurate measurements of keff in subcritical systems. In this paper, based on the open-source program OpenMC, a module with the function of calculating the α-eigenvalue is developed based on the k-α iterative method. Based on the nodal expansion method (NEM), an adjoint neutron flux calculation program was developed, which in turn used the idea of coupling the k-α iterative method with the NEM to obtain the neutron kinetics parameters (α, , and ) of the subcritical system and allowed for a more accurate keff under the subcritical system as compared to the traditional k-mode program.
In this paper, the results of the α-eigenvalues calculated by the program are validated using the Godiva benchmark and the MUSE-4 device as computational objects. The accuracy of the results for and was verified with the KUCA (Kyoto University Critical Assembly) benchmark. The results of the keff calculations using k-mode and α-mode are compared with the ADS benchmark.
The results show that the calculation program (α-mode) can obtain keff under the subcritical system more accurately, which makes up for the shortcomings of the traditional program, which cannot be calculated under the deep subcritical system. The relative error between the calculated and reference values was less than 750 pcm at deep subcriticality (keff = 0.899). The error was less than 400 pcm at the deeper subcritical system (keff = 0.952), which can satisfy the demand for neutron dynamics parameters and keff calculation in the subcritical system. The program can also continue to be upgraded in the later stage in the calculation method and other aspects.
