Abstract
Throughout core life, the reactor vessel is continually bombarded with neutron flux embrittling the vessel and limiting its useful life. As a result, it is imperative to adequately predict how much flux has passed through the vessel during all stages of its life, as a means of ensuring it has adequate ductility to preclude a brittle fracture even under design accident conditions. At present many of these predictions are made either by purely deterministic or purely stochastic means, each offering their own advantages and disadvantages. This paper introduces a coupled method for calculating fluence through the VERA framework, which enables modeling incremental accumulations of fluence while simultaneously accounting for several factors as they evolve through core life. The intention of this method is to simplify the calculation process and provide better resource utilization in obtaining the required accuracy.
