Improvements of the reactivity devices modeling for the advanced CANDU reactor

In the context of the ACR™ (Advanced CANDU Reactor), 3D transport calculations are required in order to simulate the reactivity devices located perpendicularly to the fuel channels. The computational scheme that is usually used for CANDU-6 and ACR reactors is based on a simplified supercell geometry in which the fuel clusters and devices are replaced by annuli. Recently, an exact modeling of 3D supercell configurations was introduced within the framework of the ACR calculations. However, with such a model, fine meshing requirements lead to problems that are very demanding in terms of computational resources. In this paper, we present improvements introduced in the ACR context to reduce the cost of the 3D supercell calculations. Two avenues of investigations are reported. First, the introduction of an accelerated characteristics method permits to reduce the computational burden of such calculations involving a large number of regions. In addition, contrarily to CANDU-6 supercell configurations, the ACR 3D geometry is prismatic and consequently a special tracking procedure can be used. This approach introduces no approximation and is significantly faster than the general 3D tracking technique. Thanks to these modifications in the computational procedure, 3D supercell calculations with a level of mesh discretization comparable to 2D cell configurations become affordable for industrial applications.