Advances in coupled safety modeling using systems analysis and high-fidelity methods.

Abstract

The potential for a sodium-cooled fast reactor to survive severe accident initiators with no damage has been demonstrated through whole-plant testing in EBR-II and FFTF. Analysis of the observed natural protective mechanisms suggests that they would be characteristic of a broad range of sodium-cooled fast reactors utilizing metal fuel. However, in order to demonstrate the degree to which new, advanced sodium-cooled fast reactor designs will possess these desired safety features, accurate, high-fidelity, whole-plant dynamics safety simulations will be required. One of the objectives of the advanced safety-modeling component of the Reactor IPSC is to develop a science-based advanced safety simulation capability by utilizing existing safety simulation tools coupled with emerging high-fidelity modeling capabilities in a multi-resolution approach. As part of this integration, an existing whole-plant systems analysis code has been coupled with a high-fidelity computational fluid dynamics code to assess the impact of high-fidelity simulations on safety-related performance. With the coupled capabilities, it is possible to identify critical safety-related phenomenon in advanced reactor designs that cannot be resolved with existing tools. In this report, the impact of coupling is demonstrated by evaluating the conditions of outlet plenum thermal stratification during a protected loss of flow transient. Outlet plenum stratification was anticipated to alter core temperatures and flows predicted during natural circulation conditions. This effect was observed during the simulations. What was not anticipated, however, is the far-reaching impact that resolving thermal stratification has on the whole plant. The high temperatures predicted at the IHX inlet due to thermal stratification in the outlet plenum forces heat into the intermediate system to the point that it eventually becomes a source of heat for the primary system. The results also suggest that flow stagnation in the intermediate system is possible, raising questions about the effectiveness of the intermediate decay heat removal systems in the design that was evaluated. Existing tools do not predict flow stagnation. This work has demonstrated that with a proper coupling approach, a high-fidelity CFD tool can be used to resolve the important flow and temperature distributions throughout a plant while still maintaining the whole-plant safety analysis capabilities of a systems analysis code.