CALCULATION OF NEUTRON-CAPTURE REACTIONS CONTRIBUTION TO ENERGY RELEASE IN VVER-1000 USING SERPENT CODE
Abstract
Calculating the energy release in fuel elements is an important aspect of the modeling and design of nuclear reactors. Most of the energy is produced by fission, but a non-negligible percentage is coming from neutron capture reactions, such as (n, γ) or (n, α). We implement a previously developed method for the calculation of effective energy release using Serpent Monte Carlo code. We investigate the percentage of capture component in effective energy release for various models of VVER-1000 fuel: firstly, an equivalent cell, then fresh fuel assemblies of different compositions, differing in fuel enrichment and the presence of burnable absorbers. The results are compared to similar calculations previously done in MCNP 4 and MCU 5.
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