Fuel depletion analysis of a small sodium fast reactor with KANEXT and SERPENT

•The KANEXT deterministic code is introduced and compared against SERPENT code.•A small sodium fast reactor was simulated with KANEXT and SERPENT.•K-effective, isotopes inventory and power distributions were compared.•Results show a very good agreement between the P3 solution of KANEXT and SERPENT.

Sodium cooled fast reactors are one of the systems considered as candidates in the Generation IV Forum. As most of Generation-IV systems are under development, efficient and reliable computational tools are needed to obtain accurate results in a reasonable computer time. In this work, the KArlsruhe Neutronic EXtended Tool (KANEXT), which is a modular code system for deterministic reactor calculations consisting of one kernel and several modules, is introduced and compared against the Monte Carlo SERPENT code, for fuel depletion calculations of a small core of a sodium fast reactor (SFR). The sodium fast reactor particularities, important for the core analysis, are described, and the model assumptions made for both codes are explained. Selected parameters, e.g. the effective neutron multiplication factor, the isotopes inventory and axial and radial power distributions against burnup are compared. The results of these comparisons show a very good agreement between the transport P3 solution of KANEXT and SERPENT.