VERA and VERA-EDU 3.5 Release Notes
- Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
The Virtual Environment for Reactor Applications components included in this distribution include selected computational tools and supporting infrastructure that solve neutronics, thermal-hydraulics, fuel performance, and coupled neutronics-thermal hydraulics problems. The infrastructure components provide a simplified common user input capability and provide for the physics integration with data transfer and coupled-physics iterative solution algorithms. Neutronics analysis can be performed for 2D lattices, 2D core and 3D core problems for pressurized water reactor geometries that can be used to calculate criticality and fission rate distributions by pin for input fuel compositions. MPACT uses the Method of Characteristics transport approach for 2D problems. For 3D problems, MPACT uses the 2D/1D method which uses 2D MOC in a radial plane and diffusion or SPn in the axial direction. MPACT includes integrated cross section capabilities that provide problem-specific cross sections generated using the subgroup methodology. The code can be executed both 2D and 3D problems in parallel to reduce overall run time. A thermal-hydraulics capability is provided with CTF (an updated version of COBRA-TF) that allows thermal-hydraulics analyses for single and multiple assemblies using the simplified VERA common input. This distribution also includes coupled neutronics/thermal-hydraulics capabilities to allow calculations using MPACT coupled with CTF. The VERA fuel rod performance component BISON calculates, on a 2D or 3D basis, fuel rod temperature, fuel rod internal pressure, free gas volume, clad integrity and fuel rod waterside diameter. These capabilities allow simulation of power cycling, fuel conditioning and deconditioning, high burnup performance, power uprate scoping studies, and accident performance. Input/Output capabilities include the VERA Common Input (VERAIn) script which converts the ASCII common input file to the intermediate XML used to drive all of the physics codes in the VERA Core Simulator (VERA-CS). VERA component codes either input the VERA XML format directly, or provide a preprocessor which can convert the XML into native input. VERAView is an interactive graphical interface for the visualization and engineering analyses of output data from VERA. The python-based software is easy to install and intuitive to use, and provides instantaneous 2D and 3D images, 1D plots, and alpha-numeric data from VERA multi-physics simulations. Testing within CASL has focused primarily on Westinghouse four-loop reactor geometries and conditions with example problems included in the distribution.
- Research Organization:
- Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States). Consortium for Advanced Simulation of LWRs (CASL)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Nuclear Energy (NE)
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC05-00OR22725
- OSTI ID:
- 1302925
- Report Number(s):
- ORNL/TM-2016/349; TRN: US1601784
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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Related Subjects
21 SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLANTS
22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS
V CODES
THERMAL HYDRAULICS
FUEL RODS
PWR TYPE REACTORS
NUCLEAR FUELS
PERFORMANCE
CROSS SECTIONS
ITERATIVE METHODS
ALGORITHMS
FISSION
COMPUTERIZED SIMULATION
MATHEMATICAL SOLUTIONS
ACCIDENTS
BURNUP
CRITICALITY
DIFFUSION
IMAGES
NEUTRON TRANSPORT
REACTOR KINETICS
THREE-DIMENSIONAL CALCULATIONS
TWO-DIMENSIONAL CALCULATIONS