A numerical simulation method for molten material behavior in nuclear reactors

In recent years, significant attention has been paid to the precise determination of relocation of molten materials in reactor pressure vessels of boiling water reactors (BWRs) during severe accidents. To address this problem, we have developed a computational fluid dynamics code JUPITER, based on thermal-hydraulic equations and multi-phase simulation models. Although the Poisson solver has previously been a performance bottleneck in the JUPITER code, this is resolved by a new hybrid parallel Poisson solver, whose strong scaling is extended up to ∼200 k cores on the K-computer. As a result of the improved computational capability, the problem size and physical models are dramatically expanded. A series of verification and validation studies are enabled, which are in agreement with previous numerical simulations and experiments. These physical and computational capabilities of JUPITER enable us to investigate molten material behaviors in reactor relevant situations.