A comprehensive evaluation of the RPT method on FCM fuel in light water reactor

Abstract The sensitivity of FCM parameters to the equivalent radius of the RPT model is evaluated by a quantitative method, and six important FCM parameters are identified. Then the relationship between the six parameters and the equivalent radius of the RPT model is analyzed. Finally, a rapid fitting RPT method is proposed. The new method can directly establish the RPT model by a fitting formula without relying on the results of the Monte Carlo high-fidelity model. The numerical results show that the fitting RPT method achieves high precision in most test cases, which demonstrates practicability for the lattice physics calculation of FCM fuel using conventional PWR lattice physics codes.