ITHNA.SYS: An Integrated Thermal Hydraulic and Neutronic Analyzer SYStem for NUR research reactor

Highlights: • We develop a neutronic and thermal hydraulic MTR reactor analyzer. • The analyzer allows a rapid determination of the reactor core parameters. • Some NUR reactor parameters have been analyzed. - Abstract: This paper introduces the Integrated Thermal Hydraulic and Neutronic Analyzer SYStem (ITHNA.SYS) that has been developed for the Algerian research reactor NUR. It is used both as an operating aid tool and as a core physics engineering analysis tool. The system embeds three modules of the MTR-PC software package developed by INVAP SE: the cell calculation code WIMSD, the core calculation code CITVAP and the program TERMIC for thermal hydraulic analysis of a material testing reactor (MTR) core in forced convection. ITHNA.SYS operates both in on-line and off-line modes. In the on-line mode, the system is linked, via the computer parallel port, to the data acquisition console of the reactor control room and allows a real time monitoring of major physical and safety parameters of the NUR core. PC-based ITHNA.SYS provides a viable and convenient way of using an accumulated and often complex reactor physics stock of knowledge and frees the user from the intricacy of adequate reactor core modeling. This guaranties an accurate, though rapid, determination of a variety of neutronic and thermal hydraulic parameters of importance for the operation and safety analysis of the NUR research reactor. Instead of the several hours usually required, the processing time for the determination of such parameters is now reduced to few seconds. Validation of the system was performed with respect to experimental measurements and to calculations using reference codes. ITHNA.SYS can be easily adapted to accommodate other kinds of MTR reactors