Extension of integrated neutronic and thermal-hydraulic analysis capabilities of the 'numerical nuclear reactor' software system for BWR applications

Conference · Sat Jul 01 00:00:00 EDT 2006

OSTI ID:22039755

Weber, D; Sofa, T; Pointer, D; Tentner, A; Zhong, Z ^[1]; Downar, T; Thomas, J ^[2]; Lo, S; Splawski, A ^[3]

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1. Argonne National Laboratory, 9700 S. Cass Ave., Argonne, IL 60439 (United States)
2. Purdue Univ., 1290 Nuclear Engineering Building, West Lafayette, IN 47907-1290 (United States)
3. CD-adapco, 200 Shepherds Bush Road, London W6 7NL (United Kingdom)

The Numerical Nuclear Reactor is a software analysis system based on the integration of high fidelity models of neutronic, thermal-hydraulic and thermo-mechanical phenomena. Originally developed for pressurized water reactors (PWRs), the current version has been extended to treat neutronic and thermal-hydraulic issues in boiling water reactors (BWRs). The neutronic module is an extension of the DeCART whole core neutron transport code, which is capable of generating three-dimensional sub-pin level power distributions with the thermal feedback effect incorporated directly during the whole core calculation. The original cell based modular ray tracing scheme has been extended to an assembly modular ray tracing to address the complex geometry of a BWR. Thermal-hydraulic analyses are performed with computational fluid dynamics (CFD) solutions based on the STAR-CD code which has been extended to treat boiling two-phase flow, along with conjugate heat transfer, for expected BWR conditions. Verification and validation of the neutronics and thermal-hydraulics modules are described. Results of integrated calculations are illustrated. A review of the numerical performance on parallel computing system is also provided. (authors)

• Research Organization: American Nuclear Society, 555 North Kensington Avenue, La Grange Park, IL 60526 (United States)
• OSTI ID: 22039755
• Resource Relation: Conference: PHYSOR-2006: American Nuclear Society's Topical Meeting on Reactor Physics - Advances in Nuclear Analysis and Simulation, Vancouver, BC (Canada), 10-14 Sep 2006; Other Information: Country of input: France; 16 refs.
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

21 SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLANTS
42 ENGINEERING
97 MATHEMATICAL METHODS AND COMPUTING
BWR TYPE REACTORS
COMPUTER CODES
COMPUTERIZED SIMULATION
HEAT TRANSFER
MATHEMATICAL SOLUTIONS
NEUTRON TRANSPORT
NEUTRON TRANSPORT THEORY
PARALLEL PROCESSING
POWER DISTRIBUTION
PWR TYPE REACTORS
REACTOR CORES
REACTOR PHYSICS
THERMAL HYDRAULICS
THREE-DIMENSIONAL CALCULATIONS
TWO-PHASE FLOW