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Conference Spotlight
Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
Standards Program
The Standards Committee is responsible for the development and maintenance of voluntary consensus standards that address the design, analysis, and operation of components, systems, and facilities related to the application of nuclear science and technology. Find out What’s New, check out the Standards Store, or Get Involved today!
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The newest era of workforce development at ANS
As most attendees of this year’s ANS Annual Conference left breakfast in the Grand Ballroom of the Chicago Downtown Marriott to sit in on presentations covering everything from career pathways in fusion to recently digitized archival nuclear films, 40 of them made their way to the hotel’s fifth floor to take part in the second offering of Nuclear 101, a newly designed certification course that seeks to give professionals who are in or adjacent to the industry an in-depth understanding of the essentials of nuclear energy and engineering from some of the field’s leading experts.
Hangbok Choi, Myunghee Choi, Ryan Hon
Nuclear Technology | Volume 205 | Number 3 | March 2019 | Pages 486-505
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2018.1495001
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Calculations have been conducted for the KRITZ-2 (KRITZ-LWR-RESR-001/002/003) and the Fast Flux Test Facility (FFTF) (FFTF-LMFR-RESR-001) Nuclear Energy Agency benchmark problems using the PARCS reactor simulation code with lattice parameters generated by the DRAGON reactor physics code and with the MCNP6 Monte Carlo code. The benchmark analyses examined the DRAGON cross-section library, PARCS energy group structure, DRAGON fuel assembly modeling, and nuclide self-shielding effect. For KRITZ-2, the PARCS 2-group core calculations with a DRAGON 361-group library based on ENDF/B-VII.1 reproduced the benchmark keff with a root-mean-square (rms) error of 0.19% δk. DRAGON/PARCS also predicted the fission rates within 5%. The MCNP results are consistent with the DRAGON/PARCS results but with a small underestimation when compared to the benchmark value. For FFTF, the PARCS 33-group core calculations underpredicted the benchmark keff by 0.19% δk while the MCNP calculation overpredicted the benchmark keff by 0.23% δk. The neutron spectrum distributions calculated by PARCS and MCNP are consistent with measured data. Since the energy boundary values of the measured neutron spectrum are not available, the calculated spectra could not be directly compared to the measured value. The DRAGON/PARCS solution to a numerical benchmark of a gas-cooled fast reactor (GFR), i.e., the Energy Multiplier Module, predicted the keff and assembly power with 0.46% δk and 3.7% rms error, respectively, when compared to the MCNP simulation. The benchmark calculations of the selected thermal and fast reactors have shown that DRAGON/PARCS simulates small reactor cores with good accuracy.
