Development and Validation of SACATRI Code for Thermal-Hydraulic Analysis of the CENM TRIGA MARK II Available to Purchase

The Moroccan TRIGA MARK II research reactor operating at power level of 2MW under natural convection regime was acquired by the CENM-Morocco in the aim of developing nuclear technology and its application in the industry and scientific research. Since 2007, start up tests have been performed on this reactor to verify that thermal, mechanical and neutronic parameters fall within the ranges allowing the safe and reliable working conditions of the reactor core. For these purposes, a thermal-hydraulic code named SACATRI, based on sub-channel model, was developed to satisfy the need of numerical simulation tool, able to predict the different thermal-hydraulic parameters of the coolant flow. In the aim of corroborating the physics modeling of the code, the present study is devoted to the quantification of the model accuracy obtained by comparing responses from SACATRI computational model with experimentally measured responses realized on the IPR-R1 TRIGA research reactor.