Citation
Aragonés Beltrán, José María and Ahnert Iglesias, Carolina and Cabellos de Francisco, Oscar Luis and García Herranz, Nuria and Aragonés Ahnert, Vanessa
(2004).
Methods and Results for the MSLB NEA Benchmark Using SIMTRAN and RELAP5.
"Nuclear Technology", v. 146
(n. 1);
pp. 29-40.
ISSN 0029-5450.
Abstract
The purpose of this paper is first to discuss the methods developed in our three-dimensional pressurized water reactor core dynamics code SIMTRAN and its coupling to the system code RELAP-5 for general transient and safety analysis. Then, we summarize its demonstration application to the Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA)/ Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Benchmark on Main Steam Line Break (MSLB), co-sponsored by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and other regulatory institutions. In particular, our work has been supported by the Spanish “Consejo de Seguridad Nuclear” (CSN) under a CSN
research project. Our results for the steady states and the guided-core transients, proposed as exercise 2 of the MSLB benchmark, show small deviations from the mean results of all participants, especially in core average parameters. For
the full-coupled core-plant transients, exercise 3, a detailed comparison with the University of Purdue–NRC results using PARCS/RELAP-5, shows quite good agreement in both integral and local parameters, especially for the more extreme return-to-power scenario.