LAPUR5.2 BWR Stability Analysis in Chinshan Nuclear Power Plant

Boiling water reactors have the unique coupling mechanisms between neutronic and two-phase flow thermal-hydraulic behaviors and may induce instability by unstable power/flow oscillations. At each core reload design, it is important to employ decay ratio for the purpose of analyzing system stability and determining its operating boundary. Making use of LAPUR5.2 and SIMULATE-3 codes, we have established a methodology to conduct such analysis. Comparisons made with vendor’s STAIF results indicated good agreements in decay ratios for Chinshan Nuclear Power Plant Unit 2 Cycle 21 reload design. This research focuses on the parametric sensitivity effect on the variation of decay ratio for different power/flow operating points. Based on the result of sensitivity studies, we presented fractional changes of decay ratios by varying certain important parameters under different power/flow points. It is concluded that density reactivity coefficient, gap conductance and recirculation loop gain on high operating power/flow points have larger fractional change of decay ratio.