A coupled 3-D kinetics/system thermal-hydraulic analysis of main steam line break accident for Optimized Power Reactor 1000

This paper presents the results of the coupled 3-D neutronics/thermal-hydraulic analysis of hypothetical main steam line break (MSLB) accident for Optimized Power Reactor 1000. One of the major concerns of this accident is a return-to-power occurrence accompanied with extremely large radial peaking near the stuck Control Element Assembly (CEA). The conventional point kinetics application does not properly account for this kind of asymmetric and local core behavior. Therefore, the current licensing method of point kinetics application introduces some uncertainties and conservatisms in the physics parameters generation, e.g., the static net scram rod worth, moderator cooldown reactivity, Doppler reactivity, and a 3-D peaking factor. The recently developed UNICORN-TM code system is applied for the 3-D coupled calculation, where neutronics code MASTER is coupled with the best-estimate system transient code RETRAN. The 3-D coupled results were assessed in comparison with those by point kinetics application using stand-alone RETRAN application. To quantify the 3-D reactivity benefits over point kinetics, both calculations assumed the accidents to be initiated from the same core state, e.g., end of cycle burnup, fuel and CEA configuration with the same initial moderator and Doppler temperature coefficient, and with initial system thermal-hydraulic condition. The core physics parameters required for point kinetics application were produced using MASTER with the method and procedure consistent with the current licensing application. The occurrence of return-to-power was simulated by intentionally reducing the net CEA worth in order to assess the spatial power distribution and local T-H effect on the dynamic reactivity feedback. The results have demonstrated that the 3-D analysis removes some of the conservatisms inherent in point kinetics analysis mainly caused by the inability to properly account for local reactivity feedback effects during return-to-power transient. Sensitivity results have demonstrated that the benefits from dynamic reactivity feedback effects can be enhanced by a proper selection of channel mapping which enables incorporating the appropriate T-H variables at locally heated region. (authors)