Benchmarking of the SPERT-III E-core experiment with the Monte Carlo codes TRIPOLI-4^®, TRIPOLI-5^® and OpenMC

This paper presents a code-to-code verification of the SPERT-III reactor in its E-core configuration using the Monte Carlo codes TRIPOLI-4^®, TRIPOLI-5^® and OpenMC. A SPERT-III E-core model was originally developed for the Monte Carlo code TRIPOLI-4^® and will be the baseline of our analysis The simulation results obtained for the main reactor physics parameters (neutron effective multiplication factor, rod worth, reactivity coefficients and kinetics parameters) with TRIPOLI-4^®and OpenMC using different nuclear data libraries are compared and analyzed. Additional verifications are carried out with the next-generation Monte Carlo code TRIPOLI-5^®, which is currently under development by CEA and IRSN (France). This paper summarizes a joint study that was conducted within an international research collaboration between CEA Paris-Saclay (France) and the Nuclear Research Center Negev (NRCN, Israel), and is a stepping stone towards future multi-physics simulations exploring the SPERT-III reactor power excursions, including thermal-hydraulics feedback.