Overview of the Use of ATHENA for Thermal-Hydraulic Analysis of Systems with Lead-Bismuth Coolant

The INEEL and MIT are investigating the suitability of lead-bismuth cooled fast reactor for producing low-cost electricity as well as for actinide burning. This paper is concerned with the general area of thermal-hydraulics of lead-bismuth cooled reactors. The ATHENA code is being used in the thermal-hydraulic design and analysis of lead-bismuth cooled reactors. The ATHENA code was reviewed to determine its applicability for simulating lead-bismuth cooled reactors. Two modifications were made to the code as a result of this review. Specifically, a correlation to represent heat transfer from rod bundles to a liquid metal and a void correlation based on data taken in a mixture of lead-bismuth and steam were added the code. The paper also summarizes the analytical work that is being performed with the code and plans for future analytical work.