Criticality safety assessment using SUSD3D and DRAGON

ISBN 978-961-6207-32-4International audienceThe Collision Probability method is a fast and efficient technique for solving the neutrontransport equation in unstructured meshes and can be used to produce homogenized cross sectionsfor use in diffusion calculations. With the highly developed tools available, the methodcan also be applied to core problems involving a large number of mesh points. Unfortunately,no tools are available to perform sensitivity analysis for such computations. In this paper, wepresent the modifications made to SUSD3D (the nuclear data sensitivity code maintained byOECD) to calculate sensitivities to nuclear data using Generalized Perturbation Theory (GPT)methods with the integral transport theory code DRAGON and the diffusion approximationcode DONJON(maintained by Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal). The propagation of uncertaintiesinherent in nuclear data is examined from simple PWR cell calculations performed withDRAGON to 3D DRAGON/DONJON core calculations for fast systems. The work has beenqualified through validations of the results against those obtained by other benchmark participantsusing direct sensitivity calculations with SCALE6. The good consistency between theresults obtained by these different tools demonstrates that the coupling is effective for criticalsafety assessment calculations