The COPERNIC3 project: how AREVA is successfully developing an advanced global fuel rod performance code
- AREVA, AREVA NP, 10 rue Juliette Recamier, 69456 Lyon (France)
- AREVA, AREVA NP GmbH, Nuclear Fuel, P.O. Box 3220, D-91050 Erlangen (Germany)
- AREVA, AREVA NP Inc., Richland, WA, 99354 (United States)
Fuel performance is a key factor for minimizing operating costs in nuclear plants. One of the important aspects of fuel performance is fuel rod design, based upon reliable tools able to verify the safety of current fuel solutions, prevent potential issues in new core managements and guide the invention of tomorrow's fuels. AREVA is developing its future global fuel rod code COPERNIC3, which is able to calculate the thermal-mechanical behavior of advanced fuel rods in nuclear plants. Some of the best practices to achieve this goal are described, by reviewing the three pillars of a fuel rod code: the database, the modelling and the computer and numerical aspects. At first, the COPERNIC3 database content is described, accompanied by the tools developed to effectively exploit the data. Then is given an overview of the main modelling aspects, by emphasizing the thermal, fission gas release and mechanical sub-models. In the last part, numerical solutions are detailed in order to increase the computational performance of the code, with a presentation of software configuration management solutions. (authors)
- Research Organization:
- American Nuclear Society, 555 North Kensington Avenue, La Grange Park, IL 60526 (United States)
- OSTI ID:
- 21229328
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: 2007 LWR Fuel Performance Meeting / TopFuel 2007, San Francisco, CA (United States), 30 Sep - 3 Oct 2007; Other Information: Country of input: France; 18 refs; Related Information: In: Proceedings of the 2007 LWR Fuel Performance Meeting / TopFuel 2007 'Zero by 2010', 683 pages.
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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