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Title: New developments in ALCYONE 2.0 fuel performance code

Conference ·
OSTI ID:22764059
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  1. CEA - Centre de Cadarache, DEN, 13108 Saint Paul lez Durance (France)

ALCYONE is a multi-dimensional (1D, 2D or 3D) fuel performance code dedicated to pressurized water reactors (PWR). This code is co-developed in the PLEIADES platform by CEA, EDF and AREVA and simulates fuel pellets and cladding evolutions during base irradiation, power ramps and accidental situations. Sophisticated chemical and physical models are used. The thermal and mechanical behavior is solved with the finite element method based code CAST3M. ALCYONE 2.0 is the next release of the code and it includes several new features: improvements in incidental and accidental situations modeling, new models available for 2D and 3D schemes and an evolution of neutron model to simulate gadolinium fuel. ALCYONE 2.0 uses a new version of PLEIADES platform which allows the parallelized computation of rod axial slices in order to decrease computation times. To better simulate accidental situations, an axial transfer model for gases and a modeling of heaters for Loss Of Coolant Accident (LOCA) experiments have been added to the code. The axial transfer model can simulate an axial internal pressure gradient in the fuel rod. For power ramps simulations in the 1D scheme, a new model for dish filling is available. This version will be validated on more than 400 rods covering a wide range of irradiation conditions.

Research Organization:
American Nuclear Society - ANS, 555 North Kensington Avenue, La Grange Park, IL 60526 (United States)
OSTI ID:
22764059
Resource Relation:
Conference: TOP FUEL 2016: LWR fuels with enhanced safety and performance, Boise, ID (United States), 11-15 Sep 2016; Other Information: Country of input: France; 9 refs.; Related Information: In: TOP FUEL 2016 Proceedings| 1670 p.
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English