Development of whole core pin-by-pin transport theory model in hexagonal geometry

The advances in computer processing power have made it possible to perform a detailed pin-by-pin calculation of the whole reactor core. A transport theory code TRANPIN has been developed to perform a whole reactor core pin-by-pin calculation in 2D hexagonal geometry. This code employs the interface current method based on 2D collision probability for reactor core calculation. The present code divides each lattice cell location in the fuel assembly (FA) into finer regions. The subdivided regions inside the lattice cell are connected using the 2D collision probabilities. The coupling of lattice cells within the assembly and assembly to assembly coupling is achieved using interface currents. The interface currents are obtained by expanding the angular flux leaving or entering the lattice cell surface into double orthonormal P2 polynomials. The interface current method is traditionally used to perform lattice calculations and its application to core calculations in hexagonal geometry is not reported in literature to the best knowledge of authors. The present code can perform the calculation in any multigroup energy structure. The code TRANPIN has been validated against two benchmark problems i) a simplified high temperature test reactor (HTTR) benchmark problem and ii) OECD VVER-1000 MOX Core Computational Benchmark. It may be mentioned that the OECD benchmark is analyzed using ultra fine WIMS library in 172 energy groups. This approach may be considered as unprecedented since the full reactor core calculations are normally performed with cross sections prescribed in few energy groups by some prior transport simulations. The present paper describes the interface current methodology incorporated in TRANPIN. The comparison of results of benchmark analyses with published results is also presented.