A Kinetics and Thermal-Hydraulics Capability for the Analysis of Research Reactors

Lumped parameters analysis of coupled kinetics and thermal-hydraulics for small reactors

“…In these works, unprotected (without scram) reactivity insertion transients in typical pool-type research reactors were analysed with the help of the code PARET. As mentioned in the Introduction, code PARET is a major coupled kinetics and thermal-hydraulics code for predicting the course of non-destructive transients in research reactors (Woodruff, 1984). Fig.…”

“…The analysis of the transient behaviour of research reactors has received prompt (Woodruff, 1984), as well as recent attention (Mirza et al, 1998;Nasir et al, 1999;Housiadas, 2000) because of its relevance in determining the limits imposed by clad melting temperature. As a rule, the analysis of such transients is carried out with the help of large code systems that simulate the coupled kinetics and thermal-hydraulics of the reactor core.…”

“…As a rule, the analysis of such transients is carried out with the help of large code systems that simulate the coupled kinetics and thermal-hydraulics of the reactor core. Typical example is the code PARET (Obenchain, 1969;Woodruff, 1984), which is a well-known and widely used code specifically developed for predicting the course of transients in research reactors. Also, complicated code systems developed for power reactors have been employed recently in research reactor applications (Woodruff et al, 1997;Hari et al, 2000;Hainoun and Schaffrath, 2001).…”

Simulation of loss-of-flow transients in research reactors

“…In the analysis of reactivity accidents it is customary to consider systematically transients with and without scram event, called respectively, protected transients and unprotected or self-limited transients. Unprotected reactivity transients have received prompt (Woodruff, 1984), as well as recent attention (Nasir et al, 1999;Mirza et al, 1998) because of their relevance in determining the reactivity insertion limits imposed by clad melting temperature. In contrast, the LOFA simulations have been limited so far to the investigation of protected transients only.…”

“…Based on this remark, the analysis focuses on determining the stability boundaries and their sensitivity to relevant operational and physical parameters. The simulations are performed with the help of code PARET (Woodruff, 1984;Obenchain, 1969), which is a widely used state-of-the-art calculational tool for carrying out coupled neutronic, thermal-hydraulic analyses in research reactors. The results effectively confirmed the existence of a large band of conditions for which core safety is maintained during the transient.…”