Evaluation of the OECD/NEA/SFR-UAM Neutronics Reactivity Feedback and Uncertainty Benchmarks

One of the tasks of the OECD/NEA sub-group on Uncertainty Analysis in Modeling (UAM) of Sodium-cooled Fast Reactors (SFR-UAM) under the NSC/WPRS/EGUAM is to perform a code-to-code comparison on neutronic feedback coefficients and associated uncertainties calculated for transient analyses. This benchmark exercise benefits from the results of a previous Sodium-cooled Fast Reactor core Feedback and Transient response (SFR-FT) Task Force work under the NSC/WPRS/EGRPANS. Two SFR cores have been selected for the SFR-UAM benchmark, the 3600MWth oxide and the 1000MWth metallic SFR cores.
Results from six and nine participating international institutes were received for respectively, the metallic and oxide SFR cores, using a wide range of calculation methodologies. The preliminary results display good agreement in the reactivity coefficients estimated, with remaining discrepancies explained by different nuclear data libraries, modeling approximations for deterministic solutions, and statistical convergence for stochastic evaluations on small perturbations. Nuclear data uncertainty evaluations for the reactivity coefficients from two institutions are compared and show consistent results.