Design and test of an update of TRAC-BF1 for the modelling of supercritical water reactors

Some designs of nuclear power plants are bringing the working fluid to supercritical conditions (SCW) to improve their efficiency. But the evaluation of nuclear plants' response to transient events or postulated accidents is complex. In the academic environment, analysis is even more complex since the codes are generally restricted access. The possibility of improving routines and interfaces with the TRAC-BF1 code to allow the modelling of complete plants that use SCW during operational events or postulated accidents, was established as the main objective of this investigation. The new tools allow the analysis of models with steam cycles including supercritical regions such as the High-Performance Light Water Reactor, in which core nominal conditions were modelled for verification purposes. Also, a benchmark with experimental data was performed as part of the tests for new models. Results showed that our code modification is capable of modelling through the critical point without defining a pseudo-two-phase region. Copyright © 2021 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.