System modeling and simulation at EBR-II

The Experimental Breeder Reactor II is a liquid metal, power producing fast reactor operated by the Argonne National Laboratory at the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory for the U.S. DOE. The primary role of EBR-II has been to provide a test bed for irradiation experiments of various fuels and materials. Recently the role has been expanded to include the Shutdown Heat Removal Testing (SHRT) and the Operational Reliability Testing (ORT) programs. Both of these programs subject the plant, i.e., reactor, secondary and steam systems to transients and abnormal conditions. Loss-of-flow transients both with and without scram, convective flow testing and plant perturbation experiments have been done as part of the SHRT program and power transients, initiated by the automatic Control Rod Drive System (ACRDS), have been done within the ORT program. The ACRDS is capable of producing power transients from 40% power to full power at rates up to 16%/sec of initial power, as well as changing reactivity via periodic discrete level sequences and periodically by multi-frequency analog signals. These tests have produced a wealth of plant data that have been collected and are being analyzed