Investigation of the fast flux test facility transient behavior during a loss of flow without scram test

A Coordinated Research Project (CRP) on the benchmark analysis of Fast Flux Test Facility (FFTF) Loss of Flow Without Scram (LOFWOS) has been held under the sponsorship of the International Atomic Energy Agency. The CRP aims to improve understanding of loss of flow events in fast reactors, as well as to assess capabilities of existing computer codes against experimental data. FFTF is a 400 MWth Sodium-cooled Fast Reactor (SFR) owned by the U.S. Department of Energy, operated from 1980 to 1992. The CRP involves the LOFWOS Test #13, belonging to a series of unprotected transients performed as part of the Passive Safety Testing program. In this framework, the Nuclear Engineering Research Group of Sapienza University of Rome has developed an integrated multiphysics modelling based on a coupled approach with RELAP5-3D (c) (thermal-hydraulics) and PHISICS (neutron-kinetics) codes. The present paper discusses the results obtained by the authors after the participation in the benchmark open phase. As suggested by the organizers, a two-step methodology was followed. Firstly, calculations were run by imposing the reactor power as boundary condition and focusing on the FFTF thermal-hydraulic behaviour. A good accordance was detected between the numerical results and the experimental data, above all for what concerns the reference core outlet temperatures. Then, the simulations were repeated by using a coupled approach. Calculation outcomes demonstrated the capability of the selected code suite (PHISICS/RELAP5-3D (R)) to reproduce the reactor transient behavior and its suitability to be used as an effective numerical tool to simulate liquid metal fast reactors accidental scenarios where thermal-hydraulic and neutron-kinetic phenomena are strongly coupled.