Impact study on the methodology used for photon-heating determination in material-testing reactors

Determination of photon heating by calculation is an important issue for the Jules Horowitz Reactor (JHR), the next international Material-Testing Reactor (MTR) under construction at CEA Cadarache research center in the south of France. Accurate knowledge of photon heating in structure materials and irradiation devices is necessary for JHR design and safety studies. In this paper, we quantify the impact of different photon-heating calculation routes by comparing absorbed dose and KERMA calculations (Kinetic Energy Released per MAss) from two different Monte Carlo codes, TRIPOLI-4.9® and MCNP (Monte Carlo N-Particle transport code). These calculations are carried out in JHR-representative geometries with the nuclear-data library JEFF3.1.1 and the photon-data library EPDL97. Discrepancies amounting to up to 18% between absorbed dose and KERMA are found in JHR irradiation devices and are linked to charged-particle transport effects taking place in heterogeneous materials of small dimensions. In a JHR-assembly cell, discrepancies of about 1% on photon KERMA and of about 3% on absorbed dose are highlighted between the two Monte Carlo codes. These latter discrepancies are small compared to typical sources of uncertainty for Monte Carlo calculation (for instance, nuclear data uncertainty) and are supposed to be due to differences in the processing of gamma-production data by neutron interactions and to differences in electromagnetic-shower models and implementation between the two codes.