Recently a neutrino measurement experiment with a novel type of detector was installed at the BR2 reactor at the Belgian Nuclear Research Centre SCK°CEN. Subatech is among the promotors of this project.

The seminar is divided into 2 parts: first an introduction to the BR2 reactor, one of the major high flux material testing reactors (MTR) in the world. It so happens that BR2 presents some specific features which make this reactor particularly well suited for a neutrino measurement experiment.

In a second part the methodologies for the reactor core load management will be presented. Three methodologies for whole core depletion and criticality analysis have been developed and implemented for the core load management at the BR2 reactor. The two semi-automatic methods developed use MCNPX (steady-state option) coupled with a point depletion code (ORIGEN-S or CINDER90). The third methodology uses the fully automatic depletion and criticality capability of MCNPX 2.7.0 to perform a whole core depletion using the 3-D BR2 MCNPX model. In the framework of the neutrino experiment at BR2 a collaboration in the field of reactor simulations will be established between the BR2 reactor physics group and the concerned Subatech team.