Analysis of the main steam line break accident with loss of offsite power using the fully coupled RELAP5/PANTHER/COBRA code package

Full text of publication follows: A coupled thermal hydraulics-neutronics code package (RELAP5/PANTHER/COBRA) has been qualified for accident analysis at Tractebel Engineering. In the TE coupled code package, the best estimate thermal-hydraulic system code, RELAP5/MOD2.5, is coupled with the full three-dimensional reactor core kinetics code, PANTHER, via a dynamic data exchange control and processing tool, TALINK. An interface between PANTHER code and the sub-channel thermal-hydraulic analysis code COBRA-IIIC is developed in order to perform online calculation of Departure from Nucleate Boiling Ratio (DNBR). The TE coupled code package has been applied to develop a MSLB accident analysis methodology using the TE deterministic bounding approach. The methodology has been applied for MSLB accident analysis in support of licensing of the power up-rate and steam generator replacement of the Doel 2 plant. The results of coupled thermal-hydraulic and neutronic analysis of SLB show that there exists an important margin in the traditional FSAR MSLB accident analysis. As a specific licensing requirement, the main steam line break accident with loss of offsite power has to be analyzed. In the standard methodology with the coupled RELAP5/PANTHER code, and some corrective methods has to be taken in order to overcome the limitations due to the close-channel T/H model in PANTHER at low flow conditions. The results show that the steam line break accident with loss of offsite power is far less limiting. In order to verify the effect of the cross-flow at low flow conditions, the fully dynamic coupling of RELAP5/PANTHER/COBRA code package is used for reanalysis of this case, in which the PANTHER close-channel T/H model is replaced by the COBRA sub-channel T/H model with crossflow option. It has been demonstrated that, although the consideration of cross-flow in this challenging situation may lead to higher core return to power and slightly lower DNBR than in the standard methodology case with coupled RELAP5/PANTHER code, the resulting DNBR remains far above the acceptance criterion. (authors)