Peach Bottom Transients Analysis with TRAC/BF1-VALKIN

The TRAC/BF1-VALKIN code is a new time domain analysis code for studying transients in a boiling water reactor. This code uses the best-estimate code TRAC/BF1 to give an account of the heat transfer and thermal-hydraulic processes and a three-dimensional neutronics module. This module has two options: the MODKIN option that makes use of a modal method based on the assumption that the neutronic flux can be approximately expanded in terms of the dominant lambda modes associated with a static configuration of the reactor core, and the NOKIN option that uses a one-step backward discretization of the neutron diffusion equation. To check the performance of the TRAC/BF1-VALKIN code, the Peach Bottom turbine trip transient has been simulated, because this transient is a dynamically complex event where neutron kinetics is coupled with thermal hydraulics in the reactor primary system, and reactor variables change very rapidly.