International agreement report: Assessment study of RELAP-5 MOD-2 Cycle 36.01 based on the DOEL-2 Steam Generator Tube Rupture incident of June 1979

This report presents a code assessment study based on a real plant transient that occurred at the DOEL 2 power plant in Belgium on June 25th 1979. DOEL 2 is a two-loop WESTINGHOUSE PWR plant of 392 MWe. A steam generator tube rupture occurred at the end of a heat-up phase which initiated a plant transient which required substantial operator involvement and presented many plant phenomena which are of interest for code assessment. While real plant transients are of special importance for code validation because of the elimination of code scaling uncertainties, they introduce however some uncertainties related to the specifications of the exact initial and boundary conditions which must be reconstructed from available on-line plant recordings and on-line computer diagnostics. Best estimate data have been reconstructed for an assessment study by means of the code RELAP5/MOD2/CYCLE 36.01. Because of inherent uncertainties in the plant data, the assessment work is focussed on phenomena whereby the comparison between plant data and computer data is based more on trends than on absolute values. Such approach is able to uncover basic code weaknesses and strengths which can contribute to a better understanding of the code potential