https://doi.org/10.1051/epjconf/202124702008
COUPLING OF nTRACER TO COBRA-TF FOR HIGH-FIDELITY ANALYSIS OF VVERs
1 Nuclear Energy and Safety Division (NES), Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) 5232 Villigen Switzerland
2 Reactor Physics Laboratory (RPL), Seoul National University (SNU) 08826 Seoul, South Korea
marianna.papadionysiou@psi.ch
rayofstar@snu.ac.kr
mathieu.hursin@psi.ch
alexander.vasiliev@psi.ch
hakim.ferroukhi@psi.ch
andreas.pautz@psi.ch
joohan@snu.ac.kr
Published online: 22 February 2021
Paul Scherrer Institut is developing a high-resolution multi-physics core solver for VVER analysis. This work presents the preliminary stages of the development, specifically the coupling of the 3D pin-by-pin neutronic solver nTRACER to the sub-channel thermal-hydraulic code COBRA-TF for single assembly multi-physics steady state calculations. The coupling scheme and the modifications performed in the codes are described in details. The results of the coupled nTRACER/COBRA-TF calculations are compared to the ones of a standalone nTRACER calculation where the feedbacks are provided by a simplified 1D thermal-hydraulic solver. The agreement is very good with fuel temperature differences around 10 K which can be attributed to the different correlations used in the various solvers. The cross-comparison of the two multi-physics computational routes serves as a preliminary verification of the coupling scheme developed between nTRACER and COBRA-TF.
Key words: high-resolution / multi-physics / nTRACER / COBRA-TF / VVER
© The Authors, published by EDP Sciences, 2021
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
