Code assessment and modelling for Design Basis Accident Analysis of the European sodium fast reactor design. Part I: System description, modelling and benchmarking

The new reactor concepts proposed in the Generation IV International Forum (GIF) are conceived to improve the use of natural resources, reduce the amount of high-level radioactive waste and excel in their reliability and safe operation. Among these novel designs Sodium Fast Reactors (SFRs) stand out due to their technological feasibility as demonstrated in several countries during the last decades. As part of the contribution of EURATOM to GIF the CP-ESFR is a collaborative project with the objective, among others, to perform extensive analysis on safety issues involving renewed SFR demonstrator designs. The verification of computational tools able to simulate the plant behaviour under postulated accidental conditions by code-to-code comparison was identified as a key point to ensure the reactor safety level. In this line, several organizations developed models able to simulate the complex and specific phenomena involving multi-physics studies that this fast reactor technology requires. In the introduction of this paper the framework of this study is described, the second section describes the plant design and the modelling guidelines. The third section presents a comparative analysis of the calculations performed by each organisation applying their models and codes to a common agreed transient with the objective to harmonize the models as well as checking the implementation of all relevant physical phenomena in the respective codes.

LAZARO CHUECA Aurelio;  AMMIRABILE Luca;  BANDINI G.;  DARMET G.;  MASSARA S.;  DUFOUR Ph.;  TOSELLO A.;  GALLEGO Eduardo;  JIMENEZ G.;  MIKITYUK K.;  SCHIKORR M;  BUBELIS E.;  PONOMAREV A.;  KRUESSMANN R.;  STEMPNIEVICZ M.H.; 

2013-11-18

ELSEVIER SCIENCE SA

JRC82623

0029-5493,   

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0029549313005736,    https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC82623,   

10.1016/j.nucengdes.2013.10.019,