Method for calculating thermal neutron spectrum in BWR lattice.

A new method for calculating space-dependent thermal neutron spectrum in a BWR lattice has been developed primarily aiming at its application to a lattice design code. Since the method has been constructed from combination of the cell-by-cell THERMOS calculation with leakage boundary condition and the coarse-mesh diffusion calculation for the cell leakage coupling, it is considerably economical as compared with various other transport theory approaches. Validation of the method has been made through comparisons with Monte Carlo calculations for a typical 8x8 BWR lattice. The discrepancies with the reference Monte Carlo calculations are mostly in the ranges of ±1.7 and ±3.0% for the rod-by-rod 235U fission cross section and the absorption rate distribution, respectively. The accuracy is acceptable and ensures the validity of various simplifications and assumptions involved in the present method. The present method is expected to be applicable to the BWR lattice analysis over the practical range of design p...