Advanced reactor concepts span the spectrum from heat pipe-cooled microreactors, through thermal and fast molten-salt reactors, to gas-and salt-cooled pebble bed reactors. The modeling and simulation of each of these reactor types comes with their own geometrical complexities and multiphysics challenges. However, the common theme for all nuclear reactors is the necessity to be able to accurately predict neutron distribution in the presence of multiphysics feedback. We argue that the current standards of modeling and simulation, which couple single-physics, single-reactor-focused codes via ad hoc methods, are not sufficiently flexible to address the challenges of modeling and simulation for advanced reactors. In this work, we present the Multiphysics Object Oriented Simulation Environment (MOOSE)-based radiation transport application Rattlesnake. The use of Rattlesnake for the modeling and simulation of nuclear reactors represents a paradigm shift away from makeshift data exchange methods, as it is developed based on the MOOSE platform with its very natural form of shared data distribution. Rattlesnake is well equipped for addressing the geometric and multiphysics challenges of advanced reactor concepts because it is a flexible finite element tool that leverages the multiphysics capabilities inherent in MOOSE. This paper focuses on the concept and design of Rattlesnake. We also demonstrate the capabilities and performance of Rattlesnake with a set of problems including a microreactor, a molten-salt reactor, a pebble bed reactor, the Advanced Test Reactor at the Idaho National Laboratory, and two benchmarks: a multiphysics version of the C5G7 benchmark and the LRA benchmark.

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The latest versions of RELAP5-3D©code allow the simulation of thermodynamic system, using different type of working fluids, that is, liquid metals, molten salt, diathermic oil, and so forth, thanks to the ATHENA code integration. The RELAP5-3D©water thermophysical properties are largely verified and validated; however there are not so many experiments to generate the liquid metals ones in particular for the Lead and the Lead Bismuth Eutectic. Recently, new and more accurate experimental data are available for liquid metals. The comparison between these state-of-the-art data and the RELAP5-3D©default thermophysical properties shows some discrepancy; therefore a tool for the generation of new properties binary files has been developed. All the available data came from experiments performed at atmospheric pressure. Therefore, to extend the pressure domain below and above this pressure, the tool fits a semiempirical model (soft sphere model with inverse-power-law potential), specific for the liquid metals. New binary files of thermophysical properties, with a detailed mesh grid of point to reduce the code mass error (especially for the Lead), were generated with this tool. Finally, calculations using a simple natural circulation loop were performed to understand the differences between the default and the new properties.

Pronghorn, built on the opensource finite element Multiphysics Object-Oriented Simulation Environment (MOOSE), leverages state-of-the-art physical models, numerical methods, and nonlinear solvers to deliver fast-running advanced reactor T/H simulation capabilities within a modern software engineering environment. This work summarizes the physical models, multiphysics and multiscale coupling, and numerical discretization in Pronghorn with emphasis on our initial target application to pebble bed reactors (PBRs). A diverse set of applications are shown to depressurized natural circulation in the SANA experiments, forced convection in the Pebble Bed Modular Reactor, three-dimensional (3-D)/one-dimensional coupling of Pronghorn and RELAP-7 systems T/H for loop analysis in the High Temperature Reactor Power Module, and forced convection in the Mark-1 Pebble Bed Fluoride-Salt-Cooled High-Temperature Reactor. A multiphysics coupling of Pronghorn, RELAP-7, and Griffin deterministic neutronics for a gas-cooled PBR demonstrates the capability of the MOOSE framework for reactor design calculations. These applications highlight the verification and validation underlying Pronghorn's software development while emphasizing features that improve upon capabilities offered by legacy tools in areas such as 3-D unstructured meshing, physics modeling, and multiphysics coupling.