Non-classical particle transport with angular-dependent path-length distributions. II: Application to pebble bed reactor cores

• We construct and analyze random and crystal arrangements of pebble bed cores.
• We investigate anisotropic diffusion of neutrons in the interior of the cores.
• We generate benchmark numerical results using Monte Carlo.
• We obtain model estimates for the anisotropic diffusion coefficients.
• We find that the new theory is accurate and able to predict anisotropic diffusion.

We describe an analysis of neutron transport in the interior of model pebble bed reactor (PBR) cores, considering both crystal and random pebble arrangements. Monte Carlo codes were developed for (i) generating random realizations of the model PBR core, and (ii) performing neutron transport inside the crystal and random heterogeneous cores; numerical results are presented for two different choices of material parameters. These numerical results are used to investigate the anisotropic behavior of neutrons in each case and to assess the accuracy of estimates for the diffusion coefficients obtained with the diffusion approximations of different models: the atomic mix model, the Behrens correction, the Lieberoth correction, the generalized linear Boltzmann equation (GLBE), and the new GLBE with angular-dependent path-length distributions. This new theory utilizes a non-classical form of the Boltzmann equation in which the locations of the scattering centers in the system are correlated and the distance-to-collision is not exponentially distributed; this leads to an anisotropic diffusion equation. We show that the results predicted using the new GLBE theory are extremely accurate, correctly identifying the anisotropic diffusion in each case and greatly outperforming the other models for the case of random systems.