Advancement of Functional Expansion Tallies Capabilities in Serpent 2
- Idaho State University, 921 South 8th Avenue, Pocatello, ID, 83209 (United States)
- Los Alamos National Laboratory, P.O. Box 1663, Los Alamos, NM 87545 (United States)
- VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, P.O. Box 1000, FI-02044 VTT, Finland (United States)
- Idaho National Laboratory, P.O. Box 1625, Idaho Falls, ID 83415 (United States)
The need for accident tolerant fuels (ATFs) became self-evident after the series of unfortunate nuclear events at Fukushima Daiichi in 2011. Restarting the Transient Reactor Test Facility (TREAT) at INL is one component in this concerted effort to establish the ATF development and testing program under the United States Department of Energy. Prior to the closure of TREAT in 1994, each experiment required multiple low-power calibration tests before and after each run. Since then, computing advancements have set computer-based modeling and simulation (M and S) as the preferred calibration method. The anticipated savings are both temporal and monetary. MAMMOTH, a collection of M and S tools built from the finite element-based MOOSE Framework, has been established to support the designed experiments intended for TREAT. This collection of tools includes: 1) Rattlesnake, a striking diffusion-based neutronics code, 2) BISON, an advanced materials and fuels performance code, and 3) RELAP-7, a powerful thermal-hydraulics solver. Each is capable of independently performing its function accurately and effectively; unified, they create a powerful multiphysics reactor core M and S application. One unfortunate weakness in this configuration lies in the unique geometry and design of TREAT's core. Although simple to model, this poses a challenge to the diffusion solver in Rattlesnake. One alternative is to replace Rattlesnake with Serpent, a fully-fledged Monte Carlo (MC) neutronics code. Coincidentally, Rattlesnake calculations are frequently validated against Serpent simulations.
- OSTI ID:
- 23047481
- Journal Information:
- Transactions of the American Nuclear Society, Vol. 116; Conference: 2017 Annual Meeting of the American Nuclear Society, San Francisco, CA (United States), 11-15 Jun 2017; Other Information: Country of input: France; 7 refs.; available from American Nuclear Society - ANS, 555 North Kensington Avenue, La Grange Park, IL 60526 (US); ISSN 0003-018X
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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Related Subjects
21 SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLANTS
ACCIDENT-TOLERANT NUCLEAR FUELS
CALIBRATION
COMPUTERIZED SIMULATION
DESIGN
FINITE ELEMENT METHOD
GEOMETRY
IDAHO NATIONAL LABORATORY
MONTE CARLO METHOD
PERFORMANCE
REACTOR CORES
TESTING
THERMAL HYDRAULICS
TREAT REACTOR