KRUSTY Model Description

commentnote:Acknowledgement

This VTB model was developed based on the International Criticality Safety Benchmark Evaluation Project (ICSBEP) benchmark model HEU-MET-FAST-101 (Smith and others, 2019) and has also referenced the prior multiphysics modeling work by B. Wilkerson, J. Galloway and C. Matthews.

The Kilopower Reactor Using Stirling TechnologY (KRUSTY) is a kilopower test reactor which was developed for space exploration missions (McClure, 2020). This model on VTB details the work sponsored by DOE NEAMS under the Micro-Reactor Application Drivers area from 2022-2023 (Stauff et al., 2022; Stauff et al., 2023; Cao et al., 2024). The multiphysics model was developed based on the technical work published in the open literature (Poston et al., 2020; Poston et al., 2020; Poston et al., 2020; McClure et al., 2020; Sanchez et al., 2020; Grove et al., 2020) and a detailed MCNP6 model included in the ICSBEP HEU-MET-FAST-101 handbook (Smith and others, 2019). Approximations have been made in the surrounding areas of the fuel disk to alleviate the burden of creating an equivalent mesh model with good mesh quality and reasonable mesh size. The simplified model will be detailed in the Simplified KRUSTY Monte Carlo Model Section.

Multiphysics models were developed for simulation of the KRUSTY at cold or warm critical states. Its details are included in the Multiphysics Model Section. This includes Griffin (Lee et al., 2021) for neutronics, MOOSE Reactor module for the unstructured mesh model (Shemon et al., 2023), BISON for thermo-mechanics and heat transfer (Williamson et al., 2021), and MOOSE MultiApp system for multiphysics coupling (Gaston et al., 2015). Models and inputs are all explained in detail in the Multiphysics Model Section and are included in the repository. In addition, to support the Griffin neutronic simulation, Serpent (Leppänen et al., 2015) and MC2-3 (Lee and Yang, 2017) were also used to provide cross sections in neutronic analysis. The MC2-3 input file and the Serpent input file are both included in the repository. Note that the material compositions that are disclosed in the MC2-3 input are omitted in the Serpent input file. The Result Section includes neutronic results obtained from the Griffin stand-alone model compared with the Monte Carlo reference model for model verification. The results obtained from the multiphysics models are also discussed in the Result Section. The Multiphysics models was then applied to simulate the 15 Ȼ reactivity insertion test. The details of the model and the results are included in the 15 Ȼ Reactivity Insertion Test Section.

References

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