• Proceedings of the Korean Nuclear Society Conference
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• 1998.05a
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• pp.641-646
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• 1998

In order to enhance the dynamic and interactive simulation capability of a system thermal hydraulic code for nuclear power plant, applicability of flow network models in SINDA/FLUIN $T^{™}$ has been tested by modeling feedwater system and coupling to DSNP which is one of a system thermal hydraulic simulation code for a pressurized heavy water reactor. The feedwater system is selected since it is one of the most important balance of plant systems with a potential to greatly affect the behavior of nuclear steam supply system. The flow network model of this feedwater system consists of condenser, condensate pumps, low and high pressure heaters, deaerator, feedwater pumps, and control valves. This complicated flow network is modeled and coupled to DSNP and it is tested for several normal and abnormal transient conditions such turbine load maneuvering, turbine trip, and loss of class IV power. The results show reasonable behavior of the coupled code and also gives a good dynamic and interactive simulation capabilities for the several mild transient conditions. It has been found that coupling system thermal hydraulic code with a flow network code is a proper way of upgrading simulation capability of DSNP to mature nuclear plant analyzer (NPA).

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.52 no.12
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• pp.2789-2802
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• 2020

Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) are attracting wide attention due to their outstanding performance, extensive studies have been carried out for lead-based fast reactors (LFRs) that cooled with Lead or Lead-bismuth (LBE), and small modular natural circulation LFR is one of the promising candidates for SMRs and LFRs development. One of the challenges for the design small modular natural circulation LFR is to master the natural circulation thermal-hydraulic performance in the reactor primary circuit, while the natural circulation characteristics is a coupled thermal-hydraulic problem of the core thermal power, the primary loop layout and the operating state of secondary cooling system etc. Thus, accurate predicting the natural circulation LFRs thermal-hydraulic features are highly required for conducting reactor operating condition evaluate and Thermal hydraulic design optimization. In this study, a thermal-hydraulic analysis code is developed for small modular natural circulation LFRs, which is based on several mathematical models for natural circulation originally. A small modular natural circulation LBE cooled fast reactor named URANUS developed by Korea is chosen to assess the code's capability. Comparisons are performed to demonstrate the accuracy of the code by the calculation results of MARS, and the key thermal-hydraulic parameters agree fairly well with the MARS ones. As a typical application case, steady-state analyses were conducted to have an assessment of thermal-hydraulic behavior under nominal condition, and several parameters affecting natural circulation were evaluated. What's more, two characteristics parameters that used to analyze natural circulation LFRs natural circulation capacity were established. The analyses show that the core thermal power, thermal center difference and flow resistance is the main factors affecting the reactor natural circulation. Improving the core thermal power, increasing the thermal center difference and decreasing the flow resistance can significantly increase the reactor mass flow rate. Characteristics parameters can be used to quickly evaluate the natural circulation capacity of natural circulation LFR under normal operating conditions.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.45 no.4
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• pp.439-458
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• 2013

REX-10 is a fully-passive small modular reactor in which the coolant flow is driven by natural circulation, the RCS is pressurized by a steam-gas pressurizer, and the decay heat is removed by the PRHRS. To confirm design decisions and analyze the transient responses of an integral PWR such as REX-10, a thermal-hydraulic system code named TAPINS (Thermal-hydraulic Analysis Program for INtegral reactor System) is developed in this study. Based on a one-dimensional four-equation drift-flux model, TAPINS incorporates mathematical models for the core, the helical-coil steam generator, and the steam-gas pressurizer. The system of difference equations derived from the semi-implicit finite-difference scheme is numerically solved by the Newton Block Gauss Seidel (NBGS) method. TAPINS is characterized by applicability to transients with non-equilibrium effects, better prediction of the transient behavior of a pressurizer containing non-condensable gas, and code assessment by using the experimental data from the autonomous integral effect tests in the RTF (REX-10 Test Facility). Details on the hydrodynamic models as well as a part of validation results that reveal the features of TAPINS are presented in this paper.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.55 no.4
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• pp.1555-1562
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• 2023

Natural circulation phenomena have been nowadays largely revisited aiming to investigate the performances of passive safety systems in carrying-out heat removal under accidental conditions. For this purpose, assessment studies using CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) and also 3D thermal-hydraulic system codes are considered at different levels of the design and safety demonstration issues. However, these tools have not being extensively validated for specific natural circulation flow regimes involving flow mixing, temperature stratification, flow recirculation and instabilities. In the present study, an experimental test case based on a small-scale pool test rig experiment performed by Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute, is considered for code-to-code and code-to-experimental data comparison. The test simulation is carried out using the FLUENT and the 3D thermal-hydraulic system CATHARE-2 codes. The objective is to evaluate and compare their prediction capabilities with respect to the test conditions of the experiment. It was observed that, notwithstanding their numerical and modelling differences, similar agreement results are obtained. Nevertheless, additional investigations efforts are still needed for a better representation of the considered phenomena.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.51 no.5
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• pp.1231-1240
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• 2019

Unlike land-based nuclear power plants, a marine or floating reactor is affected by external forces due to ocean conditions. These external forces can cause additional accelerations and affect each system and equipment of the marine reactor. Therefore, in designing a marine reactor and evaluating its performance and stability, a thermal hydraulic safety analysis code is necessary to consider the thermal hydrodynamic effects of ship motion. MARS, which is a reactor system analysis code, includes a dynamic motion model that can simulate the thermal-hydraulic phenomena under three-dimensional motion by calculating the body force term included in the momentum equation. In this study, it was verified that the dynamic motion model can simulate fluid motion with reasonable accuracy using conceptual problems. In addition, two modifications were made to the dynamic motion model; first, a user-supplied table to simulate a realistic ship motion was implemented, and second, the flow regime map determination algorithm was improved by calculating the volume inclination information at every time step if the dynamic motion model was activated. With these modifications, MARS could simulate the thermal-hydraulic phenomena under ocean motion more realistically.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.55 no.11
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• pp.4048-4056
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• 2023

The feasibility of using the Monte Carlo code MCS to generate multigroup cross sections for nodal diffusion simulations RAST-F of liquid metal fast reactors is investigated in this paper. The performance of the MCS/RAST-F code system is assessed using steady-state simulations of the ANTS-100e core. The results show good agreement between MCS/RAST-F and MCS reference solutions, with a keff difference of less than 77 pcm and root-mean-square differences in radial and axial power of less than 0.5% and 0.25%, respectively. Furthermore, the MCS/RAST-F reactivity feedback coefficients are within three standard deviations of the MCS coefficients. To validate the internal thermal-hydraulic (TH) feedback capability in RAST-F code, the coupled neutronic/TH1D simulation of ANTS-100e is performed using the case matrix obtained from MCS branch calculations. The results are compared to those obtained using the MARS-LBE system code and show good agreement with relative temperature differences in fuel and coolant of less than 0.8%. This study demonstrates that the MCS/RAST-F code system can produce accurate results for core steady-state neutronic calculations and for coupled neutronic/TH simulations.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.31 no.3
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• pp.344-363
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• 1999

A multi-dimensional thermal-hydraulic system analysis code, MARS 1.3.1, has been developed in order to have the realistic analysis capability of two-phase thermal-hydraulic transients for pressurized water reactor (PWR) plants. As the backbones for the MARS code, the RELAP5/MOD3.2.1.2 and COBRA-TF codes were adopted in order to take advantages of the very general, versatile features of RELAP5 and the realistic three-dimensional hydrodynamic module of COBRA-TF. In the MARS code, all the functional modules of the two codes were unified into a single code first. Then, the source codes were converted into the standard Fortran 90, and then they were restructured using a modular data structure based on "derived type variables" and a new "dynamic memory allocation" scheme. In addition, the Windows features were implemented to improve user friendliness. This paper presents the developmental work of the MARS version 1.3.1 including the hydrodynamic model unification, the heat structure coupling, the code restructuring and modernization, and their verifications.their verifications.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.49 no.7
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• pp.1388-1395
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• 2017

The Helically coiled tube Once-Through Steam Generator (H-OTSG) is a key piece of equipment for compact small reactors. The present study developed and verified a thermal-hydraulic design and performance analysis computer code for a countercurrent H-OTSG installed in a small pressurized water reactor. The H-OTSG is represented by one characteristic tube in the model. The secondary side of the H-OTSG is divided into single-phase liquid region, nucleate boiling region, postdryout region, and single-phase vapor region. Different heat transfer correlations and pressure drop correlations are reviewed and applied. To benchmark the developed physical models and the computer code, H-OTSGs developed in Marine Reactor X and System-integrated Modular Advanced ReacTor are simulated by the code, and the results are compared with the design data. The overall characteristics of heat transfer area, temperature distributions, and pressure drops calculated by the code showed general agreement with the published data. The thermal-hydraulic characteristics of a typical countercurrent H-OTSG are analyzed. It is demonstrated that the code can be utilized for design and performance analysis of an H-OTSG.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.37 no.6
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• pp.587-594
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• 2005

In an effort to develop a thermal-hydraulic (TH) safety analysis code for Gas-cooled Reactors (GCRs), the MARS code, which was primarily developed for TH analysis of water reactor systems, has been extended here for application to GCRs. The modeling requirements of the system code were derived from a review of major processes and phenomena that are expected to occur during normal and accident conditions of GCRs. Models fur code improvement were then identified through a review of existing MARS code capability. Among these, the following priority models necessary fur the analysis of limiting high and low pressure conduction cooling events were evaluated and incorporated in MARS-GCR/V1 : 1) Helium (He) and Carbon Dioxide ($CO_2$) as main system fluids, 2) gas convection heat transfer, 3) radiation heat transfer, and 4) contact heat transfer models. Each model has been assessed using various conceptual problems for code-to-code benchmarks and it was demonstrated that MARS-GCR/V1 is capable of capturing the relevant phenomena. This paper describes the models implemented in MARS-GCR/V1 and their verification and validation results.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.46 no.5
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• pp.719-724
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• 2014

During the development process of a thermal-hydraulic system code, a non-regression test (NRT) must be performed repeatedly in order to prevent software regression. The NRT process, however, is time-consuming and labor-intensive. Thus, automation of this process is an ideal solution. In this study, we have developed a program to support an efficient NRT for the SPACE code and demonstrated its usability. This results in a high degree of efficiency for code development. The program was developed using the Visual Basic for Applications and designed so that it can be easily customized for the NRT of other computer codes.