TY - GEN
T1 - Demonstration of coupled fuel performance calculations in vera on watts bar unit 1, cycle 1
AU - Stimpson, S.
AU - Clarno, K.
AU - Powers, J.
AU - Collins, B.
AU - Pawlowski, R.
AU - Toth, A.
AU - Gardner, R.
AU - Novascone, S.
AU - Pitts, Stephanie
AU - Hales, Jason
AU - Pastore, G.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 by PHYSOR 2018. All Rights Reserved.
PY - 2018
Y1 - 2018
N2 - As the core simulator capabilities in the Virtual Environment for Reactor Applications (VERA) have become more mature and stable, increased attention has been given to coupling BISON to provide fuel performance simulations. This technique has been a very important driver for the pellet-clad interaction challenge problem being pursued by the Consortium for Advanced Simulation of Light Water Reactors (CASL). In this paper, two coupling approaches are demonstrated on quarter core problems based on Watts Bar Nuclear Plant Unit 1, Cycle 1: (1) an Inline approach, in which a one-way coupling is used between MPACT/CTF and BISON, but no fuel temperature information is passed back to MPACT/CTF, and (2) a two-way approach (Coupled) in which the fuel temperature is passed from BISON. In both approaches, power and temperature distributions from MPACT/CTF are used to inform the BISON simulations for each rod in the core. These demonstrations present the first integrated fuel performance simulations in VERA, which opens many possibilities for future work, including applications to accident-tolerant fuel efforts and transient simulations, which are of critical importance to CASL. They also highlight the potential to move away from the current BISON-informed fuel temperature lookup table approach, which is the default in MPACT/CTF simulations, if performance improvements are made in the near future.
AB - As the core simulator capabilities in the Virtual Environment for Reactor Applications (VERA) have become more mature and stable, increased attention has been given to coupling BISON to provide fuel performance simulations. This technique has been a very important driver for the pellet-clad interaction challenge problem being pursued by the Consortium for Advanced Simulation of Light Water Reactors (CASL). In this paper, two coupling approaches are demonstrated on quarter core problems based on Watts Bar Nuclear Plant Unit 1, Cycle 1: (1) an Inline approach, in which a one-way coupling is used between MPACT/CTF and BISON, but no fuel temperature information is passed back to MPACT/CTF, and (2) a two-way approach (Coupled) in which the fuel temperature is passed from BISON. In both approaches, power and temperature distributions from MPACT/CTF are used to inform the BISON simulations for each rod in the core. These demonstrations present the first integrated fuel performance simulations in VERA, which opens many possibilities for future work, including applications to accident-tolerant fuel efforts and transient simulations, which are of critical importance to CASL. They also highlight the potential to move away from the current BISON-informed fuel temperature lookup table approach, which is the default in MPACT/CTF simulations, if performance improvements are made in the near future.
KW - BISON
KW - CTF
KW - Coupling
KW - MPACT
KW - VERA
UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/85106065380
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85106065380
T3 - International Conference on Physics of Reactors, PHYSOR 2018: Reactor Physics Paving the Way Towards More Efficient Systems
SP - 3524
EP - 3535
BT - International Conference on Physics of Reactors, PHYSOR 2018
PB - Sociedad Nuclear Mexicana, A.C.
T2 - 2018 International Conference on Physics of Reactors: Reactor Physics Paving the Way Towards More Efficient Systems, PHYSOR 2018
Y2 - 22 April 2018 through 26 April 2018
ER -