Improving Configuration Management of Thertnalhydraulic Analysis by Automating the Linkage Between Pipe Geomefry and Plant Idealization

Abstract

All safety analysis codes require some representation of actual plant data as a part of their input. Such representations, referred to at Point Lepreau Generating Station (PLGS) as plant idealizations, may include piping layout, orifice, pump or valve opening characteristics, boundary conditions of various sorts, reactor physics parameters, etc. As computing power increases, the numerical capabilities of thermalhydraulic analysis tools become more sophisticated, requiring more detailed assessments, and consequently more complex and complicated idealizations of the system models. Thus, a need has emerged to create a precise plant model layout in electronic form which ensures a realistic representation of the plant systems, and from which analytical approximations of any chosen degree of accuracy may be created. The benefits of this process are twofold. Firstly, the job of developing a plant idealization is made simpler, and therefore is cheaper for the utility. More important however, are the improvements in documentation and reproducibility that this process imparts to the resultant idealization. Just as the software that performs the numerical operations on the input data must be subject to verification/validation, equally robust measures must be taken to ensure that these software operations are being applied to valid idealizations, that are formally documented. Since the CATHENA Code is one of the most important thermalhydraulic code used for safety analysis at PLGS the main effort was directed towards the systems plant models for this code. This paper reports the results of the work carried on at PLGS and ANSL to link the existing piping data base to the actual CATHENA plant idealization. An introduction to the concept is given first, followed by a description of the databases, and the supervisory tool which manages the data, and associated software. An intermediate code, which applies some thermalhydraulic rules to the data, and translates the resultant data to CATHENA structure is then described. Finally, the results of some validation work are shown.