Variational acceleration for Subspace Iteration Method. Application to nuclear power reactors

The Subspace Iteration Method is a popular approach to obtain the dominant eigenvalues and their corresponding eigenvectors of a given matrix. We have applied this method, making use of two Rayleigh–Ritz projections, to obtain the dominant Lambda Modes of a nuclear power reactor. Also, we have developed a variational acceleration technique for this method, and we have stated that this variational acceleration is very convenient, mainly, when the required number of eigenvalues is low. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Review on condensation on the containment structures

In the last two decades condensation on the containment structures in presence of noncondensables has received substantial attention by nuclear scientists and engineers. The reason is that many Generation III and III+ reactors rely on passive systems operating under natural circulation. As a consequence, a vast number of publications have been made in the open literature. This paper reviews the specific physical phenomena that are involved in condensation and discusses how they have been considered in the different available models. In addition, it explores the data that have been used for validation and provides some insights on the effective suitability for this purpose. Finally, the paper summarizes the current codes' capabilities to deal with wall condensation in the presence of noncondensables according to the most recent available validation exercises.     

The pulsing CPSD method for subcritical assemblies driven by spontaneous and pulsed sources

Stochastic neutron transport theory is applied to the derivation of the two-neutron-detectors cross power spectral density for subcritical assemblies when external pulsed sources are used. A general relationship between the two-detectors probability generating functions of the kernel and the source is obtained. This relationship considers the contribution to detectors statistics of both the pulsed source and the intrinsic neutron one. An expansion in α-modes is derived for the final solution, which permits to take into account the effect of higher harmonics in subcritical systems. Further, the expression corresponding to the fundamental mode approximation is compared with recent results from experiments performed under the MUSE-4 European research project.     

Averaging methods of the gap heat transfer coefficients and the loss form coefficients of nuclear reactor cores loaded with different fuel bundles

When performing transient analysis in heterogeneous nuclear reactors loaded with different types of fuel bundles is necessary to model the reactor core by a few representative fuel elements with average properties of a region containing a large number of fuel elements. The properties of these representative fuel bundles are obtained by averaging the thermal–hydraulic properties of the fuel elements contained in each region. In this paper we study the different ways to perform the averaging of the thermal–hydraulic properties that can have an influence on the transient results for licence purposes. Also we study the influence of the different averaging methods on the peak clad temperature (PCT) evolution for a LOCA, and on the critical power ratio (CPR) in the hot channels for a turbine trip transient without bypass credit.     

Consistent generation of point feedback reactivity parameters for stability and thermalhydraulic codes

This paper shows a consistent methodology to obtain the point kinetics feedback reactivity parameters to be used by stability codes, like LAPUR-5, or transient codes, like TRAC-BF1. This methodology has been implemented in the code PAPU that generates the point kinetic parameters and feedback reactivity coefficients for the LAPUR and TRAC-BF1 codes. The results of the nodal reactivities obtained with the PAPU methodology have been compared with the results of other codes for different types of perturbations. Also, the reactivity tables generated by PAPU have been used in the LAPUR-5 code obtaining good results when the DR computed by LAPUR with these reactivity tables have been compared with the experimental DR obtained from signal analysis of Cofrentes NPP.     

Auto-correlation and variance-to-mean measurements in a subcritical core obeying multiple alpha-modes

Neutron noise measurements based on the Rossi-α and Feynman-α methodologies have been performed in a heterogeneous subcritical system. It is shown that the traditional single alpha-mode formulations of the Rossi-α and Feynman-α methods are not applicable due to the presence of higher alpha-modes. Formalisms taking into account multiple alpha-modes are applied resulting in satisfactory results. Three alpha-modes could be identified using the Rossi-α method, whereas only two could be obtained using the Feynman-α method. In the Feynman-α case, the possibility to obtain the fastest decaying alpha-mode was diminished due to detector dead time effects. It was found that the slowest decaying alpha-mode does not exactly correspond to the prompt decay found in pulsed neutron source measurements, which confirms the results of previous studies. Strengths and weaknesses of the multiple alpha-mode Rossi-α and Feynman-α methods observed in this study are pointed out.