Caliban Reactor Criticality Benchmark Calculations and Interpretation of Simulations with Different Transport Codes and Different Nuclear Databases
Résumé
Criticality benchmarks are reference experiments performed in particular to test and compare different neutron transport codes and different evaluated nuclear databases. Caliban reactor was a cylindrical critical assembly, with a highly enriched uranium metallic core. It was operated at CEA Valduc center until the beginning of the 2010’s. Thanks to its simple geometry and to the composition of its fuel, Caliban was a device adapted for reference experiments. So a criticality benchmark using Caliban reactor was performed and published in 2007, in the International Handbook of Evaluated Criticality Safety Benchmark Experiments.
In this Handbook, the chosen experiment was modeled with codes and libraries available at that time: TRIPOLI-4.4.1 code with ENDF/B-6 R4 library, MCNPX-2.6 code with ENDF/B-6 R0 library and MCNP-5 code with ENDF/B-6 R6 library.
Transport codes and evaluated data have been improved since the benchmark publication. In this paper, the model published in the benchmark will be run with new tools, especially with the last available version of TRIPOLI-4 code and the last available versions of ENDF and JEFF data libraries.
Simulation results will be compared with published Caliban benchmark calculations and differences will be discussed.
This work will also be an opportunity to check the consistency between the experiment description and the benchmark model, both published in the Handbook: geometry dimensions, mass and density definitions of the different model elements will be particularly studied. Consistency between the benchmark model and the modeling using the simulation codes will be studied too: the definition of the volumes will be especially checked.