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DOE OSTI · 23203960

VERA BWR progression problems

Lawing, C.·Palmtag, S.·Asgari, M.
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Abstract

During the first phase of the Consortium for Advanced Simulation of Light Water Reactors (CASL) program, the Virtual Environment for Reactor Applications (VERA) was developed with a focus on capabilities for high-fidelity, multiphysics simulation of pressurized water reactors (PWRs). During this development effort, a set of progression problems was created ranging from smaller pin cell calculations to larger 3D full-core calculations. These progression problems helped to guide the development of the software and served as benchmarks against which to test VERA. Since 2019, efforts have been made to extend the capabilities of VERA to model boiling water reactors (BWRs). Because BWR simulations come with many unique challenges, a set of BWR progression problems was developed to aid in this new effort. The BWR progression problems range from 2D lattice calculations to 3D mini-core problems, and reference neutronic solutions were computed using continuous-energy Monte Carlo codes. MPACT, one of the neutronics code in VERA, was benchmarked using the BWR progression problems. The code is capable of computing solutions to all problems. The eigenvalues computed by MPACT agree well with the Monte Carlo reference solutions. (authors)

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21 SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLANTSBENCHMARKSBWR TYPE REACTORSCOMPUTERIZED SIMULATIONCOUPLINGM CODESNEUTRON TRANSPORTS CODESTHERMAL HYDRAULICSV CODES

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Lawing, C., Palmtag, S., Asgari, M.. 2022-07-01. VERA BWR progression problems. https://doi.org/10.13182/physor22-37713

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