A Serpent2-SUBCHANFLOW-TRANSURANUS coupling for pin-by-pin depletion calculations in Light Water Reactors

Manuel García (Corresponding Author), Riku Tuominen, Andre Gommlich, Diego Ferraro, Ville Valtavirta, Uwe Imke, Paul Van Uffelen, Luigi Mercatali, Victor Sanchez-Espinoza, Jaakko Leppänen, Sören Kliem

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleScientificpeer-review

21 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

This work presents the development of a coupling scheme for Serpent2, a continuous-energy Monte Carlo particle transport code, SUBCHANFLOW, a subchannel thermalhydraulics code, and TRANSURANUS, a fuel-performance code, suitable for large-scale high-fidelity depletion calculations for Light Water Reactors. The calculation method is based on the standard neutronic-thermalhydraulic approach, replacing the simple fuel-rod solver in SUBCHANFLOW with the more complex thermomechanic model of TRANSURANUS. The depletion method is fully coupled and semi-implicit, and the implementation relies on an object-oriented design with mesh-based feedback exchange. The results of the three-code system for a 360-day depletion calculation of a VVER-1000 fuel assembly with a pin-by-pin modelling approach are presented and analyzed. The performance of this tool, as well as the bottlenecks for its application to full-core problems, are discussed.

Original languageEnglish
Article number107213
JournalAnnals of Nuclear Energy
Volume139
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - May 2020
MoE publication typeA1 Journal article-refereed

Keywords

  • LWR
  • Multiphysics
  • Serpent2
  • SUBCHANFLOW
  • TRANSURANUS

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