Developing skills for neutronic modelling of nuclear power reactors in South Africa
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Abstract
In recent years, due to economic and social infrastructure
development and growth, South Africa has
been facing growth in energy demand. Addressing
this demand includes building more coal power stations,
however with attention paid in designing
them to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. A second
response is to deploy more power sources using
renewable and nuclear energy. The South African
government has plans to add about 9.6 GW of
nuclear energy to the electricity grid. Accepting that
South Africa will seek an international vendor or
vendors to supply nuclear plants, a certain degree
of localisation of manufacture and operation should
be planned. One localisation task that can be actively
pursued is reactor analysis, including criticality,
burnup, shielding and accident analysis of the reactor.
Such development of expertise will support
both economic and safety aspects of building and
running a nuclear reactor. With this in mind, neutronic
analysis of the VVER 1000 reactor was initiated.
The government’s intention to build a new fleet
of reactors means it is important that the VVER-
1000 reactor be included in studies done by the
reactor analysis group at the School of Mechanical
and Nuclear Engineering at the North-West
University. The analysis was performed using
MCNP6 for the cold zero power state at the beginning
of cycle with the specifications obtained from
the open literature. The input file was generated
using the in-house code NWURCS. To ensure accuracy
and precision of the results produced by the
MCNP6 code, convergence studies of the MCNP6
models were carried out. Once a satisfactory model
was obtained, the critical reactor state was calculated
by adjusting the boron concentration in the
water. Furthermore, the control rod worth, reactivity
coefficients and beff were also calculated and are
reported in this paper
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Nyalunga, G. et al. 2016. Developing skills for neutronic modelling of nuclear power reactors in South Africa. Journal of energy in Southern Africa, 27(4):64-76. [https://doi.org/10.17159/2413-3051/2016/v27i4a1496]