Thermal hydraulic and neutron kinetic simulation of the TRIGA IPR-R1 research reactor using RELAP5-PARCS coupled model

The computational advances observed in the last two decades have provided direct impact on the researches related to nuclear simulations which use several types of computer codes, including coupling between them, allowing also the analytical simulation and representing with very much accuracy the real behavior of nuclear plants. Studies of complex scenarios in nuclear reactors have been improved by the use of thermal hydraulic (TH) and neutron kinetics (NK) coupled system codes. This work presents a coupling methodology application between RELAP5 and PARCS system codes using as a model the research reactor TRIGA lPR-R1. Adequate cross sections for the PARCS code were supplied using the WIMSD5 code. results of steady state and transient calculations using the 3D neutron modeling to the lPR-R1 are presented. (author)