New developments in ALCYONE 2.0 fuel performance code

Conference · Fri Jul 01 04:00:00 EDT 2016

OSTI ID:22764059

Marelle, V.; Goldbronn, P.; Bernaud, S.; Castelier, E.; Julien, J.; Nkonga, K.; Noirot, L.; Ramiere, I. ^[1]

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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
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS
42 ENGINEERING
CLADDING
COMPUTERIZED SIMULATION
FINITE ELEMENT METHOD
FLOW MODELS
FUEL PELLETS
FUEL RODS
GADOLINIUM
GAS FLOW
HEAT TRANSFER
HEATERS
IRRADIATION
LOSS OF COOLANT
NEUTRONS
NUCLEAR FUELS
PRESSURE GRADIENTS
PWR TYPE REACTORS