BENCHMARKING OF TRANSIENT CODES AGAINST CYCLE 19 STABILITY MEASUREMENTS AT LEIBSTADT NUCLEAR POWER PLANT (KKL)

Coupled neutronics-thermal hydraulic codes are used by many utilities, research institutes and regulatory authorities worldwide for performing BWR stability analysis. RAMONA-3 has been established in the industry for quite a long time as a reliable time-domain dynamic code with best performance for predictive calculations. Next generation of codes such as RAMONA-5, SIMULATE-3K and POLCA-T, with advanced two-group neutronics and more detailed plant description and thermal hydraulics models have been introduced. The performance of these codes against the stability measurements performed in cycle 19 at the Swiss nuclear power plant Leibstadt (KKL), a BWR/6 from General Electric, is presented in this paper. Important suppliers of the nuclear industry such as Westinghouse Electric Sweden, AREVA NP Germany, Studsvik Scandpower Inc. USA, and the Swiss research institute PSI have participated in this work. The validation of calculation methods against the KKL stability measurements was considered important by the various organizations for different reasons. Amongst others, Studsvik Scandpower aimed at filling a gap in the SIMULATE-3K stability benchmark database to include a jet pumps driven plant, AREVA NP had to fulfill fuel licensing requirements, and Westinghouse planned to launch POLCA-T parallel to a validation of RAMONA-5 as a production code. PSI cooperated with KKL in stability issues from the very beginning and introduced the stability test project in the framework of NACUSP, a European consortium that aimed for a better understanding of the BWR stability problem. For that purpose, this validation provides an assessment of advanced stability codes for modern BWR core designs.