Chapter 13 - Development and application of System Analysis Module from the user’s view

Abstract

Under the Nuclear Energy Advanced Modeling and Simulation program of the US government, the System Analysis Module (SAM) is developed by Argonne National Laboratory to execute system-level modeling and simulation for advanced reactors, for example, sodium fast reactor, lead-cooled fast reactor, fluoride salt–cooled high-temperature reactor, and molten salt reactor. To achieve the capabilities of fast-running, high-fidelity, and whole-plant transient analyses, SAM employs the Multiphysics Object-Oriented Simulation Environment framework and the Portable, Extensible Toolkit for Scientific Computation solvers to satisfy the requirement of linear and nonlinear calculations. Correspondingly, the program environment, numerical method, and physical models are optimized to provide a better experience and access for its users. During the development of the SAM code, validations and demonstrations have been widely performed based on previous experimental data and code-to-code comparisons. All the results indicate that SAM is capable of predicting the fluid dynamics and heat transfer responses within different advanced reactor systems. In addition, the flexible coupling interface gives SAM more choices to combine with other external codes for multiscale and multiphysics evaluation of various scenarios. Continuous effort is being made on the development of this modern system analysis tool that can support the design, operation, and licensing of an advanced reactor in the future.