INL/CON-23-75590-Revision-0

The Effect of Point Reactor

Kinetics Solvers on the
Uncertainties of Nuclear
Reactor Simulations
November 2023

Thabit Abuqudaira, Pavel V. Tsvetkov, Piyush Sabharwall

INL is a U.S. Department of Energy National Laboratory operated by Battelle Energy Alliance, LLC
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 INL/CON-23-75590-Revision-0

The Effect of Point Reactor Kinetics Solvers on the

Uncertainties of Nuclear Reactor Simulations

Thabit Abuqudaira, Pavel V. Tsvetkov, Piyush Sabharwall

November 2023

Idaho National Laboratory

Idaho Falls, Idaho 83415

http://www.inl.gov

Prepared for the

U.S. Department of Energy
Under DOE Idaho Operations Office
Contract DE-AC07-05ID14517
 The Effect of Point Reactor Kinetics Solvers on the Uncertainties of Nuclear Reactor Simulations

Thabit Abuqudaira,* Pavel V. Tsvetkov,* Piyush Sabharwall†

* Department of Nuclear Engineering, Texas A&M University, 423 Spence St, College Station, TX 77843,
[email protected], [email protected]
†
Nuclear Science & Technology, Idaho National Laboratory, 1955 N Fremont Ave, Idaho Falls, ID 83415,
[email protected]

INTRODUCTION simulation will help to design efficient and accurate

simulation codes.
In the next few decades, the nuclear industry is expected In the present study, the transient response of a reactor in
to expand and play a significant role in meeting global energy the case of reactivity insertion with and without reactivity
needs and addressing climate change concerns [1]. Currently, feedback was explored. The uncertainties resulting from
many advanced reactor technologies are being developed using various numerical solvers to simulate the reactor
worldwide. Advanced nuclear reactors will incorporate response using the point reactor kinetics model were
enhanced safety features to minimize the possibility of investigated.
accidents and mitigate their consequences. This trend of
expansion requires extensive design and simulation tools METHODOLOGY
development efforts.
Considerable interest is focused on the uncertainties of To investigate the capabilities of the available numerical
the simulation tools in nuclear reactor simulation. These solvers, the transient response of a benchmark was studied
uncertainties in the developed models significantly affect the using the point reactor kinetics equations. The equations were
reliability of the simulation results and, thus, the safety of solved numerically using several numerical solvers.
nuclear reactors. Understanding and quantifying these
uncertainties help ensure that the simulation results are Point Reactor Kinetics
reliable and can be used to assess the safety of reactor
designs. Thus, analyzing the uncertainties of simulation tools The space-independent point reactor kinetics equation
will play a role in advanced nuclear reactors' licensing and with six groups of delayed neutron precursors can be written
demonstration efforts. as follows:
In reactor simulation, the neutronics behavior of the
reactor can be modeled using deterministic or Monte Carlo 𝑑𝑛(𝑡) 𝜌−𝛽
= 𝑛(𝑡) + ∑6𝑖=1 𝜆𝑖 𝐶𝑖 (𝑡) (1)
codes. Deterministic codes are based on neutron balance 𝑑𝑡 𝛬

equations. The point reactor kinetics equation is one of the 𝑑𝐶𝑖 (𝑡) 𝛽𝑖
simplest models describing a nuclear reactor's neutron = 𝑛(𝑡) − 𝜆𝑖 𝐶𝑖 (𝑡) (2)
𝑑𝑡 𝛬
balance. Simulation results obtained from the point reactor
kinetics equation can provide insights into the dynamic Where n(t) is the neutron density as a function of time, ρ
behavior of the reactor and transients, such as the response to is the net reactivity, β is the total delayed neutron fraction, Λ
reactivity insertions. is the mean neutron generation time, λi is the decay constant
A well-known challenge in reactor kinetics is the for the ith group of delayed neutrons, βi is the delayed neutron
stiffness of the point reactor kinetics equations [2]. The fraction of the ith group, and Ci is the delayed neutron
stiffness of the model is mainly due to the difference in precursors concentration for the ith group as a function of
neutron lifetime magnitude between the prompt and the time.
delayed neutrons. This behavior results in high uncertainties Equations 1 and 2 are Ordinary Differential Equations
in solving the equations using numerical techniques and, (ODEs). Solving the equations, the time-dependent neutron
thus, requires fine time steps in the numerical solvers. To density and precursors concentration can be found. Thus, the
overcome this issue, many algorithms and methods were reactor response can be assessed due to various transients.
developed [3]–[8].
Currently, various programming languages provide Numerical Solvers
algorithms and solver packages to solve stiff equations. Such
packages are essential when there is no analytical solution for Developing numerical methods to solve stiff ODEs has
the equation. Some of these packages were used to simulate been a broad research area. The advancement in computer
the reactor dynamics using the point reactor kinetics model. software for solving ODEs allowed several codes to be used
Studying the uncertainties of using these packages in reactor for solving the point reactor kinetics. Several packages of
numerical solvers are available in different programming reactivity insertion of +β were compared with the exact
languages. These include Visual Basic for Applications solution of the point reactor kinetics equation with no
(VBA), MATLAB, and Python. reactivity feedback [10]. The effect of the step size adopted
The most common type of numerical solvers is the ODE in Euler's method on the uncertainty of the simulated neutron
solver package in MATLAB. MATLAB ODE solvers are density over time is shown in Fig. 1.
variable step-size solvers. Thus, the time step can not be
optimized. However, error control can be performed using
the relative error tolerance and absolute error tolerance
commands, RelTol and AbsTol, respectively.
VBA is a programming language that is integrated into
Microsoft Excel. VBA allows users to automate tasks, create
custom functions, and extend the functionality of Excel
beyond its built-in features. In addition, because of the user
interface capabilities that VBA can provide along with Excel,
it has been widely used for reactor simulators.
In Python, the odeint function is used to solve systems of
ODEs numerically. It is part of the open-source SciPy library.

Benchmark
Fig. 1. The effect of step size in Euler's method on the
Benchmarks are used to test and compare new methods, uncertainty of the simulated neutron density.
tools, and nuclear data libraries. A thermal-spectrum nuclear
reactor was chosen as the benchmark to assess the It can be observed that using smaller time steps results in
uncertainties using different numerical solvers for the point more accurate simulations. In addition, the truncation error
reactor kinetics model. The benchmark was widely used to seems to accumulate over time. Overall, results showed that
evaluate and compare the results of new analytical and even a basic first-order numerical solver could produce
numerical methods to solve the point reactor kinetics satisfactory results with the proper choice of the time step
equations [9]. The reactor has a mean neutron generation time size, overcoming the stiffness issue of the point reactor
of 5×10-4 (s). The remaining kinetics parameters of the kinetics equations.
reactor are listed in Table I.
The neutron densities in the reactor following a step
TABLE I. Kinetics parameters of the thermal reactor. reactivity insertion of +β using several MATLAB solvers are
listed in Table II. Emboldened digits represent the digits that
Group i βi λi
are unidentical to the exact solution.
1 0.0002850 0.0127
2 0.0015975 0.0317 TABLE II. Neutron density after +β step reactivity insertion
using several MATLAB solvers.
3 0.0014100 0.1150 Neutron density (cm-3)
4 0.0030525 0.3110 Solver
t = 1 (s) t = 100 (s)
5 0.0009600 1.4000 Exact 3.21835409455342E+01 2.59648464655087E+89
6 0.0001950 3.8700
ode45 3.21835409455343E+01 2.59648464655216E+89

The reactor is assumed to be at a steady state with an ode23 3.21835409455332E+01 2.59648464654076E+89

initial value of neutron density equal to 1. The steady-state
ode113 3.21835409455341E+01 2.59648464657050E+89
values of the delayed neutron precursors concentrations can
be calculated from Equation 2. ode78 3.21835409455344E+01 2.59648464655307E+89

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION ode89 3.21835409455342E+01 2.59648464655104E+89

ode15s 3.21835409455573E+01 2.59648464755296E+89

The neutron density was simulated in the reactor
following step reactivity insertions using the previously ode23s 3.21835409540523E+01 2.59648473838132E+89
mentioned solvers. Positive and negative values of step
ode23t 3.21835409529999E+01 2.59648472676726E+89
reactivity insertion were simulated.
First, a simple solution using Euler's method was ode23tb 3.21835409508072E+01 2.59648466787295E+89
developed in VBA. The simulation results following a step
 All MATLAB solvers could correctly predict the neutron [7] C. Z. Petersen, S. Dulla, M. T. M. B. Vilhena, and P.
density following a step reactivity insertion. However, few Ravetto, "An Analytical Solution of the Point Kinetics
solvers were able to predict the density with 11 or more Equations with Time-Variable Reactivity by the
correct decimal places. ode89 solver was shown to be the Decomposition Method," Progress in Nuclear Energy, 53,
highest accuracy solver. pp. 1091–1094 (2011).
[8] D. Suescún-Díaz and G. Espinosa-Paredes, "On the
CONCLUSION Numerical Solution of the Point Reactor Kinetics
Equations," Nuclear Engineering and Technology, 52 no. 6,
The integration of advanced numerical solvers within pp. 1340–1346 (2020).
programming languages has dramatically simplified the
solution of the point reactor kinetics equation. As a [9] B. Ganapol, P. Picca, A. Previti, and D. Mostacci, "The
consequence, obtaining precise and efficient results has Solution of the Point Kinetics Equations via Converged
become straightforward. Identifying the numerical solvers Accelerated Taylor Series (CATS)," PHYSOR 2012 –
that produce high-accuracy results in solving the point reactor Advances in Reactor Physics, Knoxville, Tennessee (2012).
kinetics equations will help advance reactor dynamics
simulations' capabilities. [10] B. D. Ganapol, "A Highly Accurate Algorithm for the
Extensive comparisons conducted on diverse Solution of the Point Kinetics Equations," Ann Nucl Energy,
numerical solvers in different programming languages have 62, pp. 564–571 (2013).
consistently demonstrated the high accuracy achievable with
some solvers. Thus, such numerical solvers can be used for
reactor simulations without building new algorithms or
complicated codes. Results showed that MATLAB and
Python have many installed ODE solvers packages that can
be used to solve the point reactor kinetics equations.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This paper is based upon work supported by the project

funded by the Idaho National Laboratory.

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