Speaker
Description
The Versatile Test Reactor (VTR) is a fast spectrum test reactor currently being developed in the United States under the direction of the US Department of Energy (USDOE), Office of Nuclear Energy. The mission of the VTR is to enable accelerated testing of advanced reactor fuels and materials required for advanced reactor technologies. The conceptual design of the 300 MWth sodium-cooled metallic-fueled pool-type fast reactor has been led by US National Laboratories in collaboration with General Electric-Hitachi and Bechtel National Inc.
The VTR is utilizing a risk-informed performance-based approach for authorization by the USDOE. As part of this approach, the development of a mechanistic source term (MST), or a realistic evaluation of radionuclide transport and release for specific transient scenarios, is central to developing an accurate representation of reactor risk. A new version of the Argonne National Laboratory Simplified Radionuclide Transport (SRT) code has been developed to support VTR MST analyses.
The SRT code is an integral sodium fast reactor radionuclide transport analysis tool, which assesses radionuclide movement from the reactor fuel to the environment. The code includes models for phenomena associated with radionuclide behavior within the fuel pins, release from failed fuel, migration through the sodium pool, and behavior in the cover gas region and containment. SRT is purposefully designed to facilitate sensitivity and uncertainty analyses with offsite consequences as the metric of interest.
For VTR, version 2.0 of the code was established to fulfill quality assurance requirements associated with the project. These efforts included updating and expanding the suite of verification and validation test cases, extension of the code models for the demonstration of code accuracy, and revisions to code software quality assurance documentation. This paper provides a summary of these activities along with a sample of analysis cases utilizing the new version of the code. The work reported in this summary is the result of studies supporting a VTR conceptual design, cost, and schedule estimate for DOE-NE to make a decision on procurement. As such, it is preliminary.
| Affiliation/Organization | Argonne National Laboratory |
|---|---|
| Speaker's title | Mr |
| Country/Int. organization | United States of America |
| Speaker's email address | dgrabaskas@anl.gov |
