Dynamic Simulation Nuclear Power Plants

DSNP (Dynamic Simulator for Nuclear Power-Plants) is a system of programs and data files by which a nuclear power plant, or part thereof, can be simulated. The acronym DSNP is used interchangeably for the DSNP language, the DSNP libraries, the DSNP precompiler, and the DSNP document generator. The DSNP language is a special-purpose, block-oriented, digital-simulation language developed to facilitate the preparation of dynamic simulations of a large variety of nuclear power plants. It is a user-oriented language that permits the user to prepare simulation programs directly from power plant block diagrams and flow charts by recognizing the symbolic DSNP statements for the appropriate physical components and listing these statements in a logical sequence according to the flow of physical properties in the simulated power plant. Physical components of nuclear power plants are represented by functional blocks, or modules. Many of the more complex components are represented by several modules. The nuclear reactor, for example, has a kinetic module, a power distribution module, a feedback module, a thermodynamic module, a hydraulic module, and a radioactive heat decay module. These modules are stored in DSNP libraries in the form of a DSNP subroutine or function, a block of statements, a macro, or a combination of the above. Basic functional blocks such as integrators, pipes, function generators, connectors, and many auxiliary functions representing properties of materials used in nuclear power plants are also available. The DSNP precompiler analyzes the DSNP simulation program, performs the appropriate translations, inserts the requested modules from the library, links these modules together, searches necessary data files, and produces a simulation program in FORTRAN.