BWR (boiling water reactor) shutdown margin model in SIMULATE-3

Boiling water reactor (BWR) technical specifications require that the reactor be kept subcritical (by some prescribed margin) when at room temperature rodded conditions with any one control rod fully withdrawn. The design of an acceptable core loading pattern may require hundreds or thousands of neutronic calculations in order to predict the shutdown margin for each control rod. Direct, full-core, three-dimensional calculations with the SIMULATE-3 two-group advanced nodal code require 3 to 6 CPU min (on a SUN-4 workstation) for each statepoint/control rod that is computed. Such computing and manpower requirements may be burdensome, particularly during the early core design process. These requirements have been significantly reduced by the development of a fast, accurate shutdown margin model in SIMULATE-3. The SIMULATE-3 shutdown margin model achieves a high degree of accuracy and speed without using axial collapsing approximations inherent in many models. The mean difference between SIMULATE-3 one-group and two-group calculations is approximately - 12 pcm with a standard deviation of 35 pcm. The SIMULATE-3 shutdown margin model requires a factor of {approximately}15 less CPU time than is required for stacked independent two-group SIMULATE-3 calculations.