The Application of the TRANSURANUS Fuel Performance Code to WWER Fuel: An Overview

The present review paper outlines the collaborative efforts for the establishment of the TRANSURANUS version for the simulation of VVER fuel pin behavior, which has been presented at this series of international conferences organized by the INRNE since 1994. The paper therefore starts with very briefly reviewing the development of the TRANSURANUS fuel performance code in collaboration with various organizations from EU member states operating VVER reactors. The development started with the application to normal operating conditions in the frame of different bilateral agreements supported by the European Commission and the IAEA (e.g. PHARE and PECO projects), followed by the specific project dedicated to its application to the loss of coolant type accidents (EXTRA). In the second part of the paper, a summary will be given of the verification, validation and benchmarking efforts, on the basis of the experimental data included in the IFPE database of the NEA, as well as in the frame of the co-ordinated research projects of the IAEA (e.g. FUMEX, FUMAC), and most recently also the Euratom project ESSANUF co-ordinated by Westinghouse Electric Sweden. Finally, we will outline the current plans for further improving the simulation capabilities of VVER fuels by means of TRANSURANUS.