Benchmarking astec-na code capability to model source term within sfr containments

Extension of Gen. IV designs to encompass severe accidents is posing huge challenges for their safety demonstration, in terms of experiments and analytical tools. In the particular case of Sodium Fast Reactors (SFRs), codes simulating accidents need to broaden their scope and include domains that were not given such significance before. One of them is source term. Within the EU JASMIN project, substantial attention is given to the in-containment source term given as a result an extended version of ASTEC-Na CPA. In order to assess this version capability, a number of experiments from the open literature have been selected; along with the CPA new version, the ASTEC LWR version as well as other codes (CONTAIN; MELCOR, FEUMIX-SOPHAEROS) have been also benchmarked with the data. This paper gives an overview of the comparisons set and synthesizes the main ideas coming out from this modeling work. Current predictive capabilities are strongly dependent on user’s parameters related to key aspects of pool fire. Besides, this study pinpoints the need for experiments resembling anticipated conditions in SFR containments in BDBA conditions.