Simulation des fuites neutroniques a l'aide d'un modele B1 heterogene pour des reacteurs a neutrons rapides et a eau legere

The neutronic calculation of a reactor's core is usually done in two steps. After solving the neutron transport equation over an elementary domain of the core, a set of parameters, namely macroscopic cross sections and potentially diffusion coefficients, are defined in order to perform a full core calculation. In the first step, the cell or assembly is calculated using the "fundamental mode theory", the pattern being inserted in an infinite lattice of periodic structures. This simple representation allows a precise modeling for the geometry and the energy variable and can be treated within transport theory with minimalist approximations. However, it supposes that the reactor's core can be treated as a periodic lattice of elementary domains, which is already a big hypothesis, and cannot, at first sight, take into account neutron leakage between two different zones and out of the core. The leakage models propose to correct the transport equation with an additional leakage term in order to represent this phenomenon. For historical reasons, numerical methods for solving the transport equation being limited by computer's features (processor speeds and memory sizes), the leakage term is, in most cases, modeled by a homogeneous and isotropic probability within a "homogeneous leakage model". Driven by technological innovation in the computer science field, "heterogeneous leakage models" have been developed and implemented in several neutron transport calculation codes. This work focuses on a study of some of those models, including the TIBERE model from the DRAGON-3 code developed at Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal, as well as the heterogeneous model from the APOLLO-3 code developed at Commissariat a l'Energie Atomique et aux energies alternatives. The research based on sodium cooled fast reactors and light water reactors has allowed us to demonstrate the interest of those models compared to a homogeneous leakage model. In particular, it has been shown that a heterogeneous model has a significant impact on the calculation of the out of core leakage rate that permits a better estimation of the transport equation eigenvalue Keff . The neutron streaming between two zones of different compositions was also proven to be better calculated.