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North American construction is back—smaller and faster—at OPG’s Darlington
“The nuclear renaissance is real here,” said Ontario Power Generation’s Subo Sinnathamby on May 8, one year to the day after OPG secured a final investment decision to build the first of four planned BWRX-300 reactors at its Darlington nuclear power plant, and shortly after the new reactor’s foundation was lifted into place. “We got our license to construct in April and our [final investment decision] in May, and we’ve been off to the races since.”
Ulrich Grundmann, Sören Kliem
Nuclear Technology | Volume 142 | Number 2 | May 2003 | Pages 146-153
Technical Paper | OECD/NRC MSLB Benchmark | doi.org/10.13182/NT03-A3380
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Main Steam Line Break (MSLB) Benchmark was defined to validate the thermal-hydraulic system codes coupled with three-dimensional (3-D) neutron kinetic codes. The reference problem is an MSLB in a pressurized water reactor at end of cycle. The analyses were performed with the 3-D core model DYN3D, the thermal-hydraulic system code ATHLET, and the coupled code DYN3D/ATHLET. The results of the DYN3D and ATHLET simulations based on the specification are compared with the results of other participants in the final OECD reports. The effect of the thermal-hydraulic nodalization of the core, i.e., the number of coolant channels, and the influence of the coolant mixing inside the pressure vessel are studied in the paper. Calculations with a reduced number of coolant channels are performed often in coupled calculations for saving computational time. Results of a 25-channel model were compared with the 177-channel calculation (1 channel per assembly). The results for global parameters like nuclear power show only small differences for the two models; however, the prediction of local parameters such as maximum fuel temperatures requires a detailed thermal-hydraulic modeling. The effect of different coolant mixing within the reactor pressure vessel is investigated. It is shown that the influence of coolant mixing mitigates the accident consequences when 3-D neutron kinetics is applied. In case of point kinetics, coolant mixing leads to an opposite effect. To profit from the 3-D core model, a realistic description of the coolant mixing in the coupled codes is a topic of further investigations.