Development and application of a dual RELAP5-3D-based engineering simulator for ABWR

For any innovated plant design, the designed paper plant can be converted into a computer as a digital plant with advanced simulation techniques before being constructed into a real plant. A digital plant, namely engineering simulator, can be applied for: (1) verification of system design and system integration, (2) power test simulation, (3) plant transient and accident analyses, (4) plant abnormal and emergency procedure development and verification, (5) design change verification and analysis, etc. An advanced engineering simulator was successfully developed for the LungMen advanced boiling water reactor (ABWR) plant to support various applications before and after commercial operation. This plant specific engineering simulator was developed based on two separate RELAP5-3D modules synchronized on a commercial simulation platform, namely 3-Key Master. On this advanced LungMen plant simulation (ALPS) platform, major plant dynamics were simulated by two separate RELAP5-3D modules, one for reactor system modeling and the other for balance of plant (BOP) system modeling. Moreover, major control systems as well as emergency core cooling system (ECCS) were all simulated in great detail with built-in tasks of this commercial simulation platform. Different from real time calculation on training simulator, precision of engineering calculation is intentionally kept by synchronizing modules based on the most time-consuming one. During synchronization, each module will check its’ own converge criteria in each small time advancement. This plant specific advanced ABWR engineering simulator has been successfully applied on: (1) licensing blowdown analysis of feed water line break (FWLB) for containment design; (2) phenomena investigation of low-pressure ECC injection bypass during FWLB; (3) analysis of FW pump performance during power ascending; (4) verification of plant vendor's pre-test calculations of each start-up test.