A Parallel Virtual Machine Interface for CATHENA

Abstract

In pursuit of best-estimate analysis for CANDU safety and design issues, several computer codes that model such processes as systems thermalhydraulics, fuel behaviour, reactor kinetics, and reactor controllers will be required to interact with each other to facilitate the modelling of integrated effects among reactor systems. It would be cumbersome, in terms of usage, software management, and quality assurance practices, to incorporate all potential numerical models into a single computer code. Instead, a 'coupled-code" methodology can be employed that relies on message-passing via computer network protocols to exchange the data among the computer codes. This approach has the advantage of maintaining the computer codes as separate entities which makes their usage, software management and quality assurance easier. In this paper, the coupled-code methodology is applied to the AECL thermalhydraulics code CATHENA (CANadian THErmalhydraulic Network Algorithm) so that it can be used in conjunction with other safety and design codes for better-estimate analyses of reactor behaviour.