VALIDATION OF A NEW CORE SIMULATOR COSMO-S FOR PWRS

摘要

A new PWR nuclear design code system, GALAXY/COSMO-S, has been developed by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd.(MHI) with support of Osaka University and Nagoya University. The code system has been developed based on today's popular techniques such as MOC and semi-analytical nodal expansion method for GALAXY and COSMO-S, respectively. These codes employ several new features to improve calculation accuracy and efficiency of commercial PWR design calculations. Especially, a new robust cross section representation model based on the concept of quality engineering is introduced in GALAXY/COSMO-S system. The new representation model is intended to cover all PWR operating conditions ranging from cold shut down to hot full power. The robustness of the cross section representation model is achieved by fitting equation including cross term effect by fuel temperature, moderator density and moderator temperature. The fitting equation is determined based on Akaike's Information Criteria (AIC) instead of empirical ways. It is the first challenge to apply the concept of quality engineering technique, which is widely used in manufacturing field, to the cross-section representation model.In order to demonstrate the applicability of COSMO-S for PWR core designs, several benchmark calculations simulating an assembly models, multi assembly models and a typical commercial plant were performed. Reactivity and power distribution were compared with the reference results prepared by GALAXY and current core design code. The results of these comparisons show excellent agreements with the references. These results validate the applicability of the GALAXY/COSMO-S system with a new cross section model for PWR core design.