State-of-the-Art Reactor Consequence Analysis Project: Sensitivity Analysis Using Dakota

Technical Report · Mon Jun 01 04:00:00 EDT 2020

DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/1763557· OSTI ID:1763557

Porter, Nathan Wayne ^[1]

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1. Sandia National Lab. (SNL-NM), Albuquerque, NM (United States)

The State-of-the-Art Reactor Consequence Analyses (SOARCA) project has focused on best estimate analyses and uncertainty analysis for postulated accidents at specific nuclear power plants. The consequences of these accidents are estimated using the simulation tools MELCOR and MACCS. To understand which uncertain input variables are important to determining these consequences, analysts have performed sensitivity analyses. The tool used to perform these sensitivity analyses in previous SOARCA work, CompModSA, is no longer supported. Therefore, the current work focuses on migrating these analyses to another tool and evaluating its performance. Dakota, which is a tool developed at Sandia National Laboratories, is used in this work. Sensitivity results are created for three analyses from the SOARCA Surry UA. Though CompModSA and Dakota vary slightly in their algorithms and implementation, their sensitivity results generally agree, which gives confidence in the Dakota approach and increases confidence in the original analyses. It is likely that this methodology is extendable to the rest of SOARCA analyses.

• Research Organization: Sandia National Laboratories (SNL-NM), Albuquerque, NM (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Nuclear Energy (NE); USDOE National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA)
• DOE Contract Number: AC04-94AL85000; NA0003525
• OSTI ID: 1763557
• Report Number(s): SAND--2020-6707; 687162
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

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