Development of Transient MPACT-CTF Capability for RIA with DNB

Technical Report · Fri Sep 29 04:00:00 EDT 2017

DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/3002098· OSTI ID:3002098

Kochunas, Brendan ^[1]; Downar, Tom ^[2]; Liu, Yuxuan ^[2]; Shen, Qicang ^[2]; Dodson, Zack ^[2]; Gerlach, Andrew ^[2]; Jabaay, Daniel ^[3]; Kukucboyaci, Vefa ^[4]

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1. Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
2. Univ. of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI (United States)
3. Univ. of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI (United States). Dept. of Chemical Engineering
4. Westinghouse Electric Corp., Pittsburgh, PA (United States)

The objective of this milestone was to continue the development, implementation, verification, and validation of the methods in VERA-CS necessary to solve the whole-core time-dependent neutron transport equations with pin-resolved detail for a practical PWR applications. This capability is necessary to provide the time dependent pin resolved neutron flux for analysis of the Reactivity Insertion Accident (RIA) as specified in the CASL RIA Challenge Problem Implementation Plan, CASL-I-2013-0060-000. The FY17 work reported here continued the FY16 work reported in CASL-U-2016-1188-000 which was primarily focused on MPACT and performed the methods, and Validation and Verification (V&V) efforts necessary to demonstrate the transient capability in VERA-CS in order to facilitate the L1 RIA milestone in FY18. This report describes the activities performed in FY17 in the three general areas of: User Support, Methods Improvements, and in V&V and Demonstration. In the area of User Support various user requested features were added to the code such as detailed reactivity edits and improvements to the VERA input. In the area of Methods Improvements, the features added included user controlled variable time stepping, a one-group CMFD Acceleration, and a Delayed Energy Deposition model; as well as improvements to the overall code robustness for the transient solution. In the area of V&V, the full suite of C5G7 Transient benchmarks was completed and significant progress was made on the solution of SPERT with VERA-CS. In the area of practical demonstration, a full core AP1000 demonstration problem was performed with VERA-CS. The work performed in FY17 enhanced the capability of performing VERACS transients for practical large-scale light water reactor problems with an acceptable computational burden and provided an important step in the completion of the CASL Reactivity Insertion Accident (RIA) Challenge Problem.

• Research Organization: Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Nuclear Energy (NE)
• DOE Contract Number: AC05-00OR22725
• OSTI ID: 3002098
• Report Number(s): CASL-U--2017-1424-000
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS
42 ENGINEERING