Abstract The trends towards higher burnups, longer in-core fuel residence time, and the development of new cladding materials, have led to the need to re-assess the safety criteria for loss-of-coolant accidents. The HALDEN IFA-650 series of experiments are integral, single-pin, in-pile tests on the fuel behavior undergoing conditions of a loss-of-coolant accident over pre-determined fuel rod linear heat rate, and under thermally-controlled structural environment. Fresh and irradiated fuel pins from commercial reactors were tested. The present work seeks to assess the capability of a new (best-estimate) thermal-hydraulics code TRACE (version 5.0), to adequately predict the thermal-hydraulic impact of a loss-of-coolant accident on fuel rods. Several tests have been simulated over a range of fuel rod power and surrounding structure temperatures. The tests initiated from conditions of single-phase liquid natural circulation operating at 7MPa with subsequent venting to near-atmospheric pressure.