Development and Verification of an Efficient Spatial Neutron Kinetics Method for Reactivity-Initiated Event Analyses

Abstract

A space/time nodal diffusion code based on the nodal expansion method (NEM), EPISODE, was developed in order to evaluate transient neutron behavior in light water reactor cores. The present code employs the improved quasi-static (IQS) method for spatial neutron kinetics, and neutron flux distribution is numerically obtained by solving the neutron diffusion equation with the nonlinear iteration scheme to achieve fast computation. A predictor-corrector (PC) method developed in the present study enabled to apply a coarse time mesh to the transient spatial neutron calculation than that applicable in the conventional IQS model, which improved computational efficiency further. Its computational advantage was demonstrated by applying to the numerical benchmark problems that simulate reactivity-initiated events, showing reduction of computational times up to a factor of three than the conventional IQS. The thermohydraulics model was also incorporated in EPISODE, and the capability of realistic reactivity event analyses was verified using the SPERT-III/E-Core experimental data.

KEYWORDS:

• spatial neutron kinetics
• numerical efficiency
• improved quasi-static method
• predictor-corrector method
• nodal expansion method
• nonlinear iteration scheme
• auto time step control
• reactivity initiated event
• EPISODE code
• neutron flux distributions
• computer codes