The ZPPR facility was conducted under a joint research program named JUPITER between the U. S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the Power Reactor and Nuclear Fuel Development Corporation (PNC) of Japan, aimed at providing an initial data base for assessment of physics issues in large LMFBR (Liquid Metal Fast Breeder Reactor) cores. The JUPITER program, which was conducted from 1978 to 1988 and consisted of twenty-one experimental assemblies, is divided into four series of experiments: JUPITER-I included one clean benchmark core (ZPPR-9) and six engineering mockup cores (ZPPR-10); JUPITER-II included six radially-heterogeneous cores (ZPPR-13A through 13C); JUPITER-III included three axially-heterogeneous cores; and JUPITER-Io included five 1000-MWe-class homogeneous cores (ZPPR-18A through 19B). In this paper, the clean reactor ZPPR-9, three engineering mockup cores (including ZPPR-10A, ZPPR-10B and ZPPR-10C) and ZPPR-18A have been selected as the critical experiments. These critical experiments of ZPPR all load the full MOX fuel.
Using SARAX for the modeling and simulations to these ZPPR critical experiments, with detailed introduction given in our previous works, the keff of the reactors compared with corresponding measurement values are shown in Table 1. As observed that the biases between simulation results and measurements are within 300pcm (except for ZPPR-10B). Without posterior correction or nuclear-data adjustment as all the other neutron-physics codes for fast reactor done, SARAX shows comparable results in modeling the real mockup reactors
Table 1 keff of ZPPR critical experiments by SARAX compared with measurements
