Study of Trace Depressurization Predictions for the Marviken Critical Flow Test

Abstract

The TRAC/RELAP Advanced Computational Engine (TRACE) has been developed by the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission as an advanced computational tool for bestestimate analyses of operational transients, loss-of-coolant accidents and other accident scenarios in light water reactors. As part of an effort to examine TRACE’s predictions for depressurization transients with critical or choked flow, the Marviken Critical Flow Test of the rapid depressurization of a large vertical vessel has been modeled with TRACE. This paper details the TRACE model and presents a comparison between TRACE’s prediction and the measured data from experiment. It is shown that TRACE’s predictions when modeling this experiment were generally reasonable.