Analysis of the OECD/NRC Oskarshamn-2 BWR stability benchmark

Tomasz Kozlowski, Aaron Wysocki, Ivan Gajev, Yunlin Xu, Thomas Downar, Kostadin Ivanov, Jeffrey Magedanz, Matthew Hardgrove, Jose March-Leuba, Nathanael Hudson, Weimin Ma

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29 Scopus citations

Abstract

On February 25, 1999, the Oskarshamn-2 NPP experienced a stability event which culminated in diverging power oscillations. The event was successfully modeled by the TRACE/PARCS coupled system code, and further uncertainty analysis of the event is described in this paper. The results show very good agreement with the plant data, capturing the entire behavior of the transient including the onset of instability, growth of the oscillations, and oscillation frequency. This provides confidence in the prediction of other parameters which are not available from the plant records. The event provides coupled code validation for a challenging BWR stability event, which involves the accurate simulation of neutron kinetics (NK), thermal-hydraulics (TH), and TH/NK coupling. The success of this work has demonstrated the ability of the 3-D coupled systems code TRACE/PARCS to capture the complex behavior of BWR stability events. The problem was released as an international OECD/NEA benchmark, and it is the first benchmark based on measured plant data for a stability event with a DR greater than one.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)4-12
Number of pages9
JournalAnnals of Nuclear Energy
Volume67
DOIs
StatePublished - May 2014
Externally publishedYes

Funding

This work was supported by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and the Swedish Radiation Safety Authority (SSM), which is gratefully acknowledged. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the NRC or SSM.

Keywords

  • BWR stability
  • Code validation
  • Coupled code
  • Oskarshamn-2
  • Stability event
  • TRACE/PARCS

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