Numerical modelling of modular high-temperature gas-cooled reactors with thorium fuel

The volumetric homogenization method for the simplified modelling of modular high-temperature gas-cooled reactor core with thorium-uranium fuel is presented in the paper. The method significantly reduces the complexity of the 3D numerical model. Hence, the computation time associated with the time-consuming Monte Carlo modelling of neutron transport is considerably reduced. Example results comprise the time evolutions of the effective neutron multiplication factor and fissionable isotopes (²³³U, ²³⁵U, ²³⁹Pu, ²⁴¹Pu) for a few configurations of the initial reactor core.