Development of PIRT and assessment matrix for verification and validation of sodium fire analysis codes

Ohno, Shuji  ; Ohshima, Hiroyuki; Tajima, Yuji*; Oki, Hiroshi*

The authors are initiating systematic verification and validation activity to demonstrate the reliability of numerical simulation tool for sodium fire behavior postulated in a fast reactor plant. The activity is in progress with the main focuses on already developed sodium fire analysis codes SPHINCS and AQUA-SF. The events to be evaluated are sodium spray, pool, or combined fire accidents followed by thermodynamic behaviors. The present paper describes that the "Phenomena Identification and Ranking Table" is developed at first to clarify the important validation points in the codes, and that an "Assessment Matrix" is proposed which summarizes the tests for validating the computational models for important phenomena. Furthermore, the paper shows a practical validation with a separate effect test in which the spray droplet combustion model of both codes predicts the burned amount of a sodium droplet with the error mostly less than 30%.