Application of Global Sensitivity Analysis to Nuclear Reactor Calculations

AbstractThe studies presented in this paper, describe the application of global sensitivity analysis to the modeling of nuclear reactor physics for better model understanding. Specifically, we investigate how much criticality conditions are affected by uncertainties in various inputs, including nuclear cross-sections, at different energies, from several isotopes in the fuel, the absorber and the moderator. The sensitivity analysis uses the Sobol’ and Jansen formulas, which allow us to estimate, for each uncertain input, its main effect, its total effect (i.e. the overall effect, which includes all the interactions, at any order, with all the other uncertain inputs), and all two-way interactions among all possible pairs of uncertain inputs. The sensitivity analysis consists of a number of model simulations, which are performed using Monte Carlo code MCNP5