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Title: An approach to model reactor core nodalization for deterministic safety analysis

Journal Article · · AIP Conference Proceedings
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4940065· OSTI ID:22494520
;  [1];  [2]
  1. Nuclear Installation Divisions, Atomic Energy Licensing Board (Malaysia)
  2. Reactor Technology Center, Malaysian Nuclear Agency (Malaysia)

Adopting good nodalization strategy is essential to produce an accurate and high quality input model for Deterministic Safety Analysis (DSA) using System Thermal-Hydraulic (SYS-TH) computer code. The purpose of such analysis is to demonstrate the compliance against regulatory requirements and to verify the behavior of the reactor during normal and accident conditions as it was originally designed. Numerous studies in the past have been devoted to the development of the nodalization strategy for small research reactor (e.g. 250kW) up to the bigger research reactor (e.g. 30MW). As such, this paper aims to discuss the state-of-arts thermal hydraulics channel to be employed in the nodalization for RTP-TRIGA Research Reactor specifically for the reactor core. At present, the required thermal-hydraulic parameters for reactor core, such as core geometrical data (length, coolant flow area, hydraulic diameters, and axial power profile) and material properties (including the UZrH{sub 1.6}, stainless steel clad, graphite reflector) have been collected, analyzed and consolidated in the Reference Database of RTP using standardized methodology, mainly derived from the available technical documentations. Based on the available information in the database, assumptions made on the nodalization approach and calculations performed will be discussed and presented. The development and identification of the thermal hydraulics channel for the reactor core will be implemented during the SYS-TH calculation using RELAP5-3D{sup ®} computer code. This activity presented in this paper is part of the development of overall nodalization description for RTP-TRIGA Research Reactor under the IAEA Norwegian Extra-Budgetary Programme (NOKEBP) mentoring project on Expertise Development through the Analysis of Reactor Thermal-Hydraulics for Malaysia, denoted as EARTH-M.

OSTI ID:
22494520
Journal Information:
AIP Conference Proceedings, Vol. 1704, Issue 1; Conference: iNuSTEC2015: International muclear science, technology and engineering conference 2015, Negeri Sembilan (Malaysia), 17-19 Aug 2015; Other Information: (c) 2016 AIP Publishing LLC; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0094-243X
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English