Three Mile Island Unit 1 Main Steam Line Break three-dimensional neutronics/thermal-hydraulics analysis: Application of different coupled codes

A comprehensive analysis of the double ended main steam line break (MSLB) accident assumed to occur in the Babcock & Wilcox Three Mile Island Unit 1 (TMI-1) has been carried out at the Dipartimento di Ingegneria Meccanica, Nucleare a della Produzione of the University of Pisa, Italy, in cooperation with the University of Zagreb, Croatia. The overall activity has been completed within the framework of the participation in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development-Committee on the Safety of Nuclear Installations-Nuclear Science Committee pressurized water reactor MSLB benchmark. Thermal-hydraulic system codes (various versions of Relap5), three-dimensional (3-D) neutronics codes (Parcs, Quabbox, and Nestle), and one subchannel code (Cobra) have been adopted for the analysis. Results from the following codes (or code versions) are assumed as reference: 1. Relap5/mod3.2.2, beta version, coupled with the 3-D neutron kinetics Parcs code parallel virtual machine (PVM) coupling 2. Relap5/mod3.2.2, gamma version, coupled with the 3-D neutron kinetics Quabbox code (direct coupling) 3. Relap5/3D code coupled with the 3-D neutron kinetics Nestle code. The influence of PVM and of direct coupling is also discussed. Boundary and initial conditions of the system, including those relevant to the fuel status, have been supplied by Pennsylvania State University in cooperation with GPU Nuclear Corporation (the utility, owner of TMI) and the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The comparison among the results obtained by adopting the same thermal-hydraulic nodalization and the coupled code version is discussed in this paper. The capability of the control rods to recover the accident has been demonstrated in all the cases as well as the capability of all the codes to predict the time evolution of the assigned transient. However, one stuck control rod caused some "recriticality" or "return to power" whose magnitude is largely affected by boundary and initial conditions.