Explicit Temperature Treatment in Monte Carlo Neutron Tracking Routines — First Results

This article discusses the preliminary implementation of the new explicit temperature treatment method to the development version Monte Carlo reactor physics code Serpent 2 and presents the first practical results calculated using the method. The explicit temperature treatment method, as introduced in [1], is a stochastic method for taking the effect of thermal motion into account on-the-fly in a Monte Carlo neutron transport calculation. The method is based on explicit treatment of the motion of target nuclei at collision sites and requires cross sections at 0 K temperature only, regardless of the number of temperatures in the problem geometry. The method includes a novel capability of modelling continuous temperature distributions. Test calculations are performed for two test cases, a PWR pin-cell and a HTGR system. The resulting keff and flux spectra are compared to a reference solution calculated using Serpent 1.1.16 with Doppler-broadening rejection correction [2]. The results are in very good agreement with the reference and also the increase in calculation time due to the new method is on acceptable level although not fully insignificant. On the basis of the current study, the explicit treatment method can be considered feasible for practical calculations.