Analysis of the peach bottom 2 BWR turbine trip experiment by RELAP5/3.2 code

This paper presents the results of the application of the system of the thermalhydraulic code RELAP5/Mod3.2 in predicting the Peach Bottom Boiling Water Reactor Turbine Trip test. This experiment constitutes a challenge to the capabilities of current computational tools in realistically predicting transient scenarios in nuclear power plants. In fact, it involves strong feedback during the transient between thermalhydraulics and neutronics. In this respect, a reference case was run in order to simulate the interactions between the generated steam line pressure wave propagation and the instantaneous core void distribution. An overall comparison shows good agreement between the code calculations and the experimental data. A series of sensitivity analyses were also performed in order to assess the code prediction features, as well as to identify uncertainties related to the adopted thermalhydraulic parameters used for the plant modelling.