JNC-CEA GCFR core neutronic benchmark

Sugino, Kazuteru; Rimpault, G*; Hayashi, Hideyuki

Within the NWP-2 (Innovative core and plant design) of the JNC/CEA bilateral agreement, it was decided to perform GCFR neutronic benchmarks in order to verify the adequacy of computational tools for the definition of GCFR core characteristics. The benchmarks have been performed on two different cores:- A conventional CO2-Cooled fast Reactor (EGCR) core with pin-type fuel- An innovative He-cooled Coated-Particle Fuel (CPF) core Results of the core design characteristics calculated by both JNC and CEA sides agreed quite satisfactorily and it is found that the remaining discrepancies do not influence the core conceptual design specification. Therefore these benchmark results can be used for ensuring some confidence in the GCFR core conceptual designs of both JNC and CEA. For the improvement in the GCFR computational tools, this benchmark has been pointing out some issues. These issues are worth being investigated for improving the design accuracy of GCFR cores.