AN EXAMPLE OF NEUTRONIC PENALIZATIONS IN REACTIVITY TRANSIENT ANALYSIS USING 3D COUPLED CHAIN HEMERA

摘要

HEMERA (Highly Evolutionary Methods for Extensive Reactor Analyses), is a fully coupled 3D computational chain developed jointly by IRSN and CEA. It is composed of CR0N0S2 (core neutronics, cross sections library from APOLLO2), FLICA4 (core thermal-hydraulics) and the system code CATHARE. Multi-level and multi-dimensional models are developed to account for neutronics, core thermal-hydraulics, fuel thermal analysis and system thermal-hydraulics, dedicated to best-estimate, conservative simulations and sensitivity analysis. In IRSN, the HEMERA chain is widely used to study several types of reactivity accidents and for sensitivity studies. Just as an example of the HEMERA possibilities, we present here two types of neutronic penalizations and their impact on a power transient due to a REA (Rod Ejection Accident): in the first one, we studied a burn-up distribution modification and in the second one, a delayed-neutron fraction modification. Both modifications are applied to the whole core or localized in a few assemblies. Results show that it is possible to use global or local changes but 1) in case of burn-up modification, the total core power can increase when assembly peak power decrease so, care has to be taken if the goal is to maximize a local power peak and 2) for delayed-neutron fraction, a local modification can have the same effect as the one on the whole core, provided that it is large enough.