Nuclear Power Plant Simulation System And Its Improvement Based On PCTRAN

With the development of nuclear power plant (NPP) in worldwide, full scope and high fidelity simulation system becomes a must for nuclear power stations. Various large-scale emulators have been developed and commercialized. In this thesis, PCTRAN, a new simulation software which may run on a personal computer, is introduced, benchmarked and revised. The main studies of the thesis are as following:The technological progress of nuclear power plant is illustrated, with the working principles and functions of the main modules in nuclear island introduced. Associated with the real NPP operational conditions, simulation requirements of reactor core, control rod bundle, reactor coolant pump (RCP), steam generator and pressurizer are presented. It is the theory basis of simulation system analysis and improvement.The functions, advantages and drawbacks of PCTRAN are discussed in the thesis. The model structure and the modeling theory are demonstrated in details. PCTRAN adopts point reactor neutron kinetics model and movable boundary two phase fluid model to simplify the calculation of the program, so it can achieve real-time and super-real-time simulation on personal computers.In view of domination of the PWRs in China, the PWR/UTSG version of PCTRAN is used to show its ability to simulate normal operation and accidents such as load rejection, large break LOCA (loss of coolant accident), and locked rotor. The benchmarks show that PCTRAN reflects most transient dynamics properly, but it can not correctly emulate the nuclear fuel and clad temperature transient in some accidents, indicating that the fuel and clad thermal exchange model in the software is not quite right.Due to the code design flaws of the software, PCTRAN has some shortcomings in functions, such as lack of real-time parameter adjustment mechanism, coupled controlling algorithm and simulation objects, and etc. Thus, this thesis provides the revise of PCTRAN steam generator model using LabVIEW to improve the program. In the revision, the real-time parameter adjustment on program running is realized, and the controlling algorithm and simulation objects are decoupled. It is a beneficial try to function adding and improvement of PCTRAN.