Remarks on Consistent Development of Plant Nodalizations: An Example of Application to the ROSA Integral Test Facility

Abstract

Experimental results obtained at integral test facilities (ITFs) are used in the validation process of system codes for the transient analyses of light water reactors (LWRs). The expertise and guidelines derived from this work are later applied to transient analyses of nuclear power plants (NPPs). However, the boundary conditions at the NPPs will always differ from those at the ITF, and hence, the soundness of the ITF model needs to be maximized. An unaltered ITF nodalization should prove to be able to simulate as many tests as possible, before any conclusion is derived to NPP analyses. The STARS group at the Paul Scherrer Institut (PSI) actively participates in several international programs, where ITFs are being used (e.g., ROSA, PKL). Several tests carried out at the ROSA large-scale test facility operated by the Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA) have been simulated in recent years by using the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission (US-NRC) system code TRACE. In this paper, 5 different posttest analyses are presented, along with the evolution of the employed TRACE nodalization and the process followed to track the consistency of the nodalization modifications. The ROSA TRACE nodalization provided results in a reasonable agreement with all 5 experiments.