Abstract
Multi-physics coupled simulations have become increasingly important during the last two decades being one of the major field of application in the nuclear technology. The nuclear reactors themselves are complex systems whose responses are driven by interactions between neutron kinetics, thermal-hydraulics, heat transfer, mechanics and chemistry. Probably, in a nuclear system, the most complex and important feedback effect takes place between the core neutron kinetics and thermal-hydraulics. The development of coupled thermal-hydraulic -neutron kinetics codes is a recurrent field of research for the nuclear industry. This contribution, developed in the Consortium for Nuclear Power (CNP) framework, has the objective of develop a dynamic coupling, using TCP/IP based socket communication, between the thermal-hydraulic system code T-TRACE, Tractebel-ENGIE version of the latest US NRC TRACE release, and the multi-group 3-D nodal diffusion and core physics code PANTHER, developed and maintained by EDF Energy (UK). As a first step of the development, a fully temporally explicit coupling scheme has been developed between TRACE and PANTHER based on a boundary conditions exchange at the core level at each temporal iteration. The OECD TMI MSLB benchmark has been selected as verification scenario for testing the ongoing developing T-TRACE/PANTHER coupled code. The developed coupled code is benchmarked code-to-code against TRACE/PARCS and T-RELAP5/PANTHER.
Highlights
Tractebel Engineering (TE) has been working since 2000 on the application of multi-physics code packages in order to perform realistic simulation of PWR reactor transients
The TE code multi-physics package based on the coupling of the 3D neutron code PANTHER and the system code RELAP was first used in the Main Steam Line Break in Hot Zero Power conditions (MSLBHZP) accident analysis methodology [1]
TE has participated to this benchmark using the T-RELAP5.mod2.5 which was the version of the code approved for licensing activities [9] at the benchmark definition
Summary
Tractebel Engineering (TE) has been working since 2000 on the application of multi-physics code packages in order to perform realistic simulation of PWR reactor transients. The TE code multi-physics package based on the coupling of the 3D neutron code PANTHER and the system code RELAP was first used in the Main Steam Line Break in Hot Zero Power conditions (MSLBHZP) accident analysis methodology [1] This methodology has been accepted by the Belgian Safety Authorities for applications related to the power uprate and steam generator replacement project of the Doel 1 and Doel 2 plants, to the Tihange-3 FSAR re-analysis and to justify the cycle length extension of Doel 4 to 18 months. Those applications were extended to accident analysis methodologies at hot full power. The capacities of the TE multi-physics code packages are extended with the inclusion of the TRACE code which is the latest in a series of advanced, best-estimate reactor systems codes developed by the U.S NRC
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