• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.53 no.10
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• pp.3379-3397
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• 2021

In this study, a multi-physics modeling method was developed to analyze a nuclear fuel rod's thermo-mechanical behavior especially for high temperature anisotropic creep deformation during ballooning and burst occurring in Loss of Coolant Accident (LOCA). Based on transient heat transfer and nonlinear mechanical analysis, the present work newly incorporated the nuclear fuel rod's special characteristics which include gap heat transfer, temperature and burnup dependent material properties, and especially for high temperature creep with material anisotropy. The proposed method was tested through various benchmark analyses and showed good agreements with analytical solutions. From the validation study with a cladding burst experiment which postulates the LOCA scenario, it was shown that the present development could predict the ballooning and burst behaviors accurately and showed the capability to predict anisotropic creep behavior during the LOCA. Moreover, in order to verify the anisotropic creep methodology proposed in this study, the comparison between modeling and experiment was made with isotropic material assumption. It was found that the present methodology with anisotropic creep could predict ballooning and burst more accurately and showed more realistic behavior of the cladding.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.55 no.5
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• pp.1775-1782
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• 2023

Several reactor physics commissioning experiments were conducted to obtain the neutronic parameters at the beginning of the G.A. Siwabessy Multi-purpose Reactor (RSG-GAS) operation. These parameters are essential for the reactor to safety operate. Leveraging the experimental data, this study evaluated the calculated core reactivity, control rod reactivity worth, integral control rod reactivity curve, and fuel reactivity. Calculations were carried out with Serpent 2 code using the latest neutron cross-section data ENDF/B-VIII.0. The criticality calculations were carried out for the RSG-GAS first core up to the third core configuration, which has been done experimentally during these commissioning periods. The excess reactivity for the second and third cores showed a difference of 510.97 pcm and 253.23 pcm to the experiment data. The calculated integral reactivity of the control rod has an error of less than 1.0% compared to the experimental data. The calculated fuel reactivity value is consistent with the measured data, with a maximum error of 2.12%. Therefore, it can be concluded that the RSG-GAS reactor core model is in good agreement to reproduce excess reactivity, control rod worth, and fuel element reactivity.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.52 no.2
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• pp.258-270
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• 2020

A new task of using the Jacobian-Free-Newton-Krylov (JFNK) method for the PWR core transient simulations involving neutronics, thermal hydraulics and mechanics is conducted. For the transient scenario of PWR, normally the Picard iteration of the coupled coarse-mesh nodal equations and parallel channel TH equations is performed to get the transient solution. In order to solve the coupled equations faster and more stable, the Newton Krylov (NK) method based on the explicit matrix was studied. However, the NK method is hard to be extended to the cases with more physics phenomenon coupled, thus the JFNK based iteration scheme is developed for the nodal method and parallel-channel TH method. The local gap conductance is sensitive to the gap width and will influence the temperature distribution in the fuel rod significantly. To further consider the local gap conductance during the transient scenario, a 1D mechanics model is coupled into the JFNK scheme to account for the fuel thermal expansion effect. To improve the efficiency, the physics-based precondition and scaling technique are developed for the JFNK iteration. Numerical tests show good convergence behavior of the iterations and demonstrate the influence of the fuel thermal expansion effect during the rod ejection problems.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.49 no.6
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• pp.1339-1345
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• 2017

In the framework of the EU funded project NURESAFE, the subchannel code CTF and the neutronics code DYN3D were integrated and coupled on the NURESIM platform. The developments achieved during this 3-year project include assembly-level and pin-by-pin multiphysics thermal hydraulics/neutron kinetics coupling. In order to test this coupling, a PWR rod ejection transient was simulated on a MOX/UOX minicore. The transient is simulated using two different models of the minicore. In the first simulation, both codes model the core with an assembly-wise resolution. In the second simulation, a pin-by-pin fuel-centered model is used in CTF for the central assembly, and a pin power reconstruction method is applied in DYN3D. The analysis shows the influence of the different models on global parameters, such as the power and the average fuel temperature, but also on local parameters such as the maximum fuel temperature.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.54 no.12
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• pp.4460-4473
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• 2022

The behaviour of the fission gas plays an important role in the fuel rod performance. In a previous work, we presented a physics-based model describing intra- and inter-granular behaviour of radioactive fission gas. The model was implemented in SCIANTIX, a mesoscale module for fission gas behaviour, and assessed against the CONTACT 1 irradiation experiment. In this work, we present the multi-scale coupling between the TRANSURANUS fuel performance code and SCIANTIX, used as mechanistic module for stable and radioactive fission gas behaviour. We exploit the coupled code version to reproduce two integral irradiation experiments involving standard fuel rod segments in steady-state operation (CONTACT 1) and during successive power transients (HATAC C2). The simulation results demonstrate the predictive capabilities of the code coupling and contribute to the integral validation of the models implemented in SCIANTIX.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.50 no.1
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• pp.35-42
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• 2018

This article presents clean core criticality calculations and control rod worth calculations for TRIGA (Training, Research, Isotope production-General Atomics) Mark II research reactor benchmark cores using Winfrith Improved Multi-group Scheme-D/4 (WIMS-D/4) and Program for Reactor In-core Analysis using Diffusion Equation (PRIDE) codes. Cores 133 and 134 were analyzed in 2-D (r, ${\theta}$) and 3-D (r, ${\theta}$, z), using WIMS-D/4 and PRIDE codes. Moreover, the influence of cross-section data was also studied using various libraries based on Evaluated Nuclear Data File (ENDF/B-VI.8 and VII.0), Joint Evaluated Fission and Fusion File (JEFF-3.1), Japanese Evaluated Nuclear Data Library (JENDL-3.2), and Joint Evaluated File (JEF-2.2) nuclear data. The simulation results showed that the multiplication factor calculated for all these data libraries is within 1% of the experimental results. The reactivity worth of the control rods of core 134 was also calculated with different homogenization approaches. A comparison was made with experimental and reported Monte Carlo results, and it was found that, using proper homogenization of absorber regions and surrounding fuel regions, the results obtained with PRIDE code are significantly improved.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.55 no.6
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• pp.2230-2245
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• 2023

KANT (KAIST Advanced Nuclear Tachygraphy) is a PWR core simulator recently developed at Korea Advance Institute of Science and Technology, which solves three-dimensional steady-state and transient multigroup neutron diffusion equations under Cartesian geometries alongside the incorporation of thermal-hydraulics feedback effect for multi-physics calculation. It utilizes the standard Nodal Expansion Method (NEM) accelerated with various Coarse Mesh Finite Difference (CMFD) methods for neutronics calculation. For thermal-hydraulics (TH) calculation, a single-phase flow model and a one-dimensional cylindrical fuel rod heat conduction model are employed. The time-dependent neutronics and TH calculations are numerically solved through an implicit Euler scheme, where a detailed coupling strategy is presented in this paper alongside a description of nodal equivalence, macroscopic depletion, and pin power reconstruction. For validation of the steady, transient, and depletion calculation with pin power reconstruction capacity of KANT, solutions for various benchmark problems are presented. The IAEA 3-D PWR and 4-group KOEBERG problems were considered for the steady-state reactor benchmark problem. For transient calculations, LMW (Lagenbuch, Maurer and Werner) LWR and NEACRP 3-D PWR benchmarks were solved, where the latter problem includes thermal-hydraulics feedback. For macroscopic depletion with pin power reconstruction, a small PWR problem modified with KAIST benchmark model was solved. For validation of the multi-physics analysis capability of KANT concerning large-sized PWRs, the BEAVRS Cycle1 benchmark has been considered. It was found that KANT solutions are accurate and consistent compared to other published works.