This paper presents and discusses results obtained with the nuclear plant safety analysis code system RELAP5/PANBOX (R/P/C) for the return-to-power scenario of exercises 2 and 3 of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development/Nuclear Energy Agency Main Steam Line Break (MSLB) Benchmark. Both the external and internal coupling options of R/P/C have been considered for exercise 3; i.e., the COBRA module of PANBOX was used to calculate the core thermal hydraulics in the external coupling option, whereas the core thermal hydraulics of RELAP5 was used in the internal coupling option. For the representation of thermal-hydraulic channels, a fine channel geometry based on the 177 fuel assemblies was selected for the external coupling option, and a coarse channel geometry based on 19 coarse channels has been investigated for the internal coupling option. The comparison of the results shows very good agreement of important core parameters between the considered coupling variants. Both exercises 2 and 3 have been investigated with respect to local safety parameters like fuel centerline temperatures and minimum departure from nucleate boiling ratios using the on-line hot subchannel analysis capability of R/P/C in the external coupling option. The results show that both quantities are far from the safety-related limits.

The benchmark demonstrates, that R/P/C - as part of the integrated CASCADE-3D core analysis system of Framatome ANP GmbH - has proven to be a powerful tool for detailed analyses of an MSLB accident.