NUMERICAL-EXPERIMENTAL RECOVERY OF POWER DENSITY IN VVER CORE BASED ON MAXIMUM LIKELIHOOD ESTIMATION AND EVALUATION OF ITS QUALITY BY FULL-SCALE VVER-MCU MODEL

S. Gorodkov, National Research Centre “Kurchatov Institute”, Russia

23rd Symposium of AER on VVER Reactor Physics and Reactor Safety (2013, Štrbské Pleso, Slovakia)
Reactor physics experiments and code validation (benchmarks)

Abstract

In-core power distribution calculated with operative code differs up to some point with
self-power neutron detector readings. Maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) give an
opportunity to receive optimal corrections to operative code results. This estimation give as
power distribution consistent with self-power neutron detector readings, so its most probable
deviation from real power production in the core.
The efficiency of this approach is
investigated. As a real core acts full-scale VVER model based on MCU Monte Carlo code,
which produces power distribution in ~2500 nodes of 3D-mesh.

Presentation / full paper