New developments in ALCYONE 2.0 fuel performance code

V. Marelle (1) , P. Goldbronn (1) , S. Bernaud (1) , E. Castelier (1) , J. Julien (1) , K. Nkonga (1) , L. Noirot (1) , I. Ramiere (1)

1 CEA-DES (ex-DEN) - CEA-Direction des Energies (ex-Direction de l'Energie Nucléaire)

ALCYONE is a multi-dimensional (1D, 2D or 3D) fuel performance code dedicated to pressurized water reactors (PWR). This code is co-developed in the PLEIADES platform by the CEA, EDF and AREVA and simulates fuel pellets and cladding evolutions during base irradiation, power ramps and accidental situations. Sophisticated chemical and physical models are used. The thermal and mechanical behavior is solved with the finite element method based code CAST3M. ALCYONE 2.0 is the next release of the code and includes several new features: improvements in incidental and accidental situations modeling, new models available for 2D and 3D schemes and an evolution of neutron model to simulate gadolinium fuel. ALCYONE 2.0 uses a new version of PLEIADES platform which allows the parallelized computation of rod axial slices in order to decrease computation times. To better simulate accidental situations, an axial transfer model for gases and a modeling of heaters for Loss Of Coolant Accident (LOCA) experiments have been added to the code. The axial transfer model can simulate an axial internal pressure gradient in the fuel rod. For power ramps simulations in the 1D scheme, a new model for dish filling is available.

Mots clés: Fuel performance code; ALCYONE

Domaines: Physique Nucléaire Expérimentale [nucl-ex]; Physique Nucléaire Théorique [nucl-th]

V. Marelle, P. Goldbronn, S. Bernaud, E. Castelier, J. Julien, et al.. New developments in ALCYONE 2.0 fuel performance code. Top Fuel 2016 - Light Water Reactor (LWR) Fuel Performance Meeting, Sep 2016, Boise, United States. ⟨cea-02439467⟩