https://doi.org/10.1051/epjn/2021002
Regular Article
VVUQ of a thermal-hydraulic multi-scale tool on unprotected loss of flow accident in SFR reactor
1
CEA, DEN, DER, F-13108 Saint-Paul Lez Durance, France
2
CEA, DEN, DM2S, F-91191 Gif-sur-Yvette, France
* e-mail: nathalie.marie@cea.fr
Received:
6
April
2020
Received in final form:
24
November
2020
Accepted:
5
January
2021
Published online: 5 February 2021
Within the framework of the French 4th-generation Sodium-cooled Fast Reactor safety assessment, methodology on VVUQ (Verification, Validation, Uncertainty Quantification) is conducted to demonstrate that the CEA's thermal-hydraulic Scientific Computation Tools (SCTs) are effective and operational for design and safety studies purposes on this type of reactor. This VVUQ-based qualification is a regulatory requirement from the French Nuclear Safety Authority (NSA). In this paper, the current practice of VVUQ approach application for a SFR accidental transient is described with regard to the NSA requirements. It constitutes the first practical, progressively improvable approach. As the SCT is qualified for a given version on a given scenario, the transient related to a total unprotected station blackout has been selected. As it is a very complex multi-scale transient, the SCT MATHYS (which is a coupling of the CATHARE2 tool at system scale, TrioMC tool at component scale and TrioCFD tool at local scale) is used. This paper presents the preliminary VVUQ application to the qualification of this tool on this selected transient. In addition, this work underlines some feedback on design and R&D aspects that should be addressed in the future to improve the SCT.
© N. Marie et al., published by EDP Sciences, 2021
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
