Development of a coupled neutronic/thermal-hydraulic tool with multi-scale capabilities and applications to HPLWR core analysis

Abstract The High Performance Light Water Reactor (HPLWR) is a thermal spectrum nuclear reactor cooled and moderated with light water operated at supercritical pressure. It is an innovative reactor concept, which requires developing and applying advanced analysis tools as described in the paper. The relevant water density reduction associated with the heat-up, together with the multi-pass core design, results in a pronounced coupling between neutronic and thermal-hydraulic analyses, which takes into account the strong natural influence of the in-core distribution of power generation and water properties. The neutron flux gradients within the multi-pass core, together with the pronounced dependence of water properties on the temperature, require to consider a fine spatial resolution in which the individual fuel pins are resolved to provide precise evaluation of the clad temperature, currently considered as one of the crucial design criteria. These goals have been achieved considering an advanced analysis method based on the usage of existing codes which have been coupled with developed interfaces. Initially neutronic and thermal-hydraulic full core calculations have been iterated until a consistent solution is found to determine the steady state full power condition of the HPLWR core. Results of few group neutronic analyses might be less reliable in case of HPLWR 3-pass core than for conventional LWRs because of considerable changes of the neutron spectrum within the core, hence 40 groups transport theory has been preferred to the usual 2 groups diffusion theory. Successively, with the usage of a developed pin-power reconstruction technique capable to account for the innovative fuel assembly design, sub-channel investigations of the individual fuel assemblies have been performed evaluating pin-wise clad temperatures. Obtained results will be discussed giving a detailed insight of the revolutionary HPLWR 3 pass core concept and understanding the physical reasons, which influence the local clad temperatures. The obtained results represent a new quality in core analyses, which takes into full consideration the coupling between neutronics and thermal-hydraulics as well as the spatial effects of the fuel assembly heterogeneity in determining the local pin-power and the associated maximum clad temperature.