Abstract
The AMP (Advanced MultiPhysics) Nuclear Fuel Performance code is a new, three-dimensional, multi-physics tool that uses state-of-the-art solution methods and validated nuclear fuel models to simulate the nominal operation and anticipated operational transients of nuclear fuel. The AMP Nuclear Fuel Performance code leverages existing validated material models from traditional fuel performance codes and the Scale/ORIGEN-S spent-fuel characterization code to provide an initial capability that is shown to be sufficiently accurate for a single benchmark problem and anticipated to be accurate for a broad range of problems. The thermomechanics-chemical foundation can be solved in a time-dependent or quasi-static approach with any variation of operator-split or fully-coupled solutions at each time step. The AMP Nuclear Fuel Performance code provides interoperable interfaces to leading computational mathematics tools, which will simplify the integration of the code into existing parallel code suites for reactor simulation or lower-length-scale coupling. A baseline validation of the AMP Nuclear Fuel Performance code has been performed through the modeling of an experiment in the Halden Reactor Project (IFA-432), which is the first validation problem incorporated in the FRAPCON Integral Assessment report.
