Investigation of Nuclear Data Libraries with TRIPOLI-4 Monte Carlo Code for Sodium-cooled Fast Reactors

The Sodium-cooled fast neutron reactor ASTRID is currently under design and development in France. Traditional ECCO/ERANOS fast reactor code system used for ASTRID core design calculations relies on multi-group JEFF-3.1.1 data library. To gauge the use of ENDF/B-VII.0 and JEFF-3.1.1 nuclear data libraries in the fast reactor applications, two recent OECD/NEA computational benchmarks specified by Argonne National Laboratory were calculated. Using the continuous-energy TRIPOLI-4 Monte Carlo transport code, both ABR-1000 MWth MOX core and metallic (U-Pu) core were investigated. Under two different fast neutron spectra and two data libraries, ENDF/B-VII.0 and JEFF-3.1.1, reactivity impact studies were performed. Using JEFF-3.1.1 library under the BOEC (Beginning of equilibrium cycle) condition, high reactivity effects of 808 ± 17 pcm and 1208 ± 17 pcm were observed for ABR-1000 MOX core and metallic core respectively. To analyze the causes of these differences in reactivity, several TRIPOLI-4 runs using mixed data libraries feature allow us to identify the nuclides and the nuclear data accounting for the major part of the observed reactivity discrepancies.