Development of a Safety Analysis Code SCTRAN for SCWR

Safety analysis is one of the chief difficulties during the research and design of SCWRs. Currently, the development of the SCWR safety analysis code is still in its infancy all around the world, and very few computer codes could carry out the trans-critical calculations where significant changes in water properties would take place. In this paper, a safety analysis code SCTRAN for SCWRs, has been developed based on RETRAN-02, the best estimate code used for safety analysis of Light Water Reactors. The ability of SCTRAN to simulate transients where both supercritical and subcritical regimes are encountered has been verified by comparing with the APROS and RELAP5-3D codes, respectively. The results show that the SCTRAN code developed in this study is capable of performing safety analysis for SCWRs, and the results are reliable. SCTRAN developed in this study is of great value and engineering significance, and could be utilized in the Chinese SCWR research and development.