A 3D transport-based core analysis code for research reactors with unstructured geometry

As an effort to enhance the accuracy in simulating the operations of research reactors, a 3D transport core analysis code system named REFT was developed. HELIOS is employed due to the flexibility of describing complex geometry. A 3D triangular nodal S-N method transport solver, DNTR, endows the package the capability of modeling cores with unstructured geometry assemblies. A series of dedicated methods were introduced to meet the requirements of research reactor simulations. Afterwards, to make it more user friendly, a graphical user interface was also developed for REFT. In order to validate the developed code system, the calculated results were compared with the experimental results. Both the numerical and experimental results are in close agreement with each other, with the relative errors of k(eff) being less than 0.5%. Results for depletion calculations were also verified by comparing them with the experimental data and acceptable consistency was observed in results. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.