Post-refinement multiscale method for pin power reconstruction

Abstract

The ability to accurately predict local pin powers in nuclear reactors is necessary to understand the mechanisms that cause fuel pin failure during steady state and transient operation. In the research presented here, methods are developed to improve the local solution using high order methods with boundary conditions from a low order global solution. Several different core configurations were tested to determine the improvement in the local pin powers compared to the standard techniques based on diffusion theory and pin power reconstruction (PPR). The post-refinement multiscale methods use the global solution to determine boundary conditions for the local solution. The local solution is solved using either a fixed boundary source or an albedo boundary condition; this solution is 'post-refinement' and thus has no impact on the global solution. (authors)