RELAP5 analysis of PKL, main steam line break test

Abstract PKL is a large scale test facility of the primary system owned by AREVA NP GmbH. It is used for extensive experimental investigations to study the integral behavior of Pressurized Water Reactor (PWR) plants under accident conditions. Since 2001, the test program is a part of an international cooperation project (SETH, followed by PKL1 and PKL2) set up by the OECD. The aim of the present work was to perform a short validation study of the thermo-hydraulics code RELAP5. A model of the PKL test facility has been developed, tested and applied to one of the experiments performed at the PKL. The chosen experiment was the test G3.1. In that experiment, a main steam line break occurs, causing a rapid depressurization of the affected steam generator. This leads to an increase of the heat transfer from the primary to the secondary side and thereby to a fast cool-down transient on the primary side. The main objective of this analysis was the qualification of the RELAP5 code results against heat transfer from the primary to the secondary side in both affected and intact loops, and temperatures in the primary system. The calculation results have been compared to the experimental results. It was concluded that the most important events during the test are reproduced relatively well by the model. The calculated coolant temperature in the core is higher than in the experiment. The minimum temperature is about 5% higher than measured. The secondary pressures in SG-1, 3, and 4 is in very good agreement with the experimental value, but in the SG-2, the depressurization is calculated to be slower than in the experiment. The different SG-2 behavior is caused by slightly different initial conditions. This fact indicates that RELAP5 results may, in some cases, be extremely sensitive to the initial conditions and this should be investigated in the future. With respect to the initial objective of the present analysis, it is concluded that the RELAP5 code is validated against the PKL test G3.1 with the developed model and within acceptable margins.