MORPHEE a multiphysics tool for control rod withdrawal modeling in SFR

The control rod withdrawal (CRW) transient is one of the most important safety issues for the early design phase of sodium fast reactors (SFR). CRW transients can cause core melting, which can lead to severe accidents. To ensure the integrity of the core, it is crucial to study CRW transients in detail since early design phase of the reactor. Two approaches are used in numerical modeling of transients at CEA. Reference codes (APOLLO3 (Schneider et al., 2016), GERMINAL (Lainet et al., 2019) for example) are used to perform detailed and precise calculations, recently these tools are being coupled to form multiphysics platforms such as described in Pascal et al. (2021); Li et al. (2023). Despite being robust and validated, this type of simulation is not adapted to design phases due to the need in computing resources it requires. The second type of approach, selected in this paper, is to use simplified, parametric tools with a limited validity range. We present here a new numerical tool called MORPHEE, which is capable of simulating CRW transients. MORPHEE is a multiphysics and multiscale tool that includes neutronics, thermal-hydraulics, and fuel behavior. The tool has been developed to provide a comprehensive understanding of the CRW transient and to assess the safety of SFR. It is based on MACARENa (Droin et al. 2020) and OCARINa (Herbreteau et al. 2018) tools. They have been validated for simulation of thermal-hydraulics and fuel pin behavior, respectively. MORPHEE uses finite-differences methods to solve thermal-hydraulics equations, neutron kinetics equations and mechanical equations. A machine learning model (Jeannin et al., 2022) is also used to predict fuel cladding heat transfer through the gap. The simulations have demonstrated the importance of considering the multiphysics and multiscale aspects of the CRW transient to predict the behavior of the reactor during an accident. In conclusion, MORPHEE is a numerical tool that can simulate the CRW transient in SFR. It can be used to study the safety of SFR during the early design phase and to optimize the design to ensure the safety of the reactor. •Multiphysics methodology for Sodium Fast Reactors transients simulation.•Control Rod Withdrawal (CRW) phenomenological-based modeling with MORPHEE tool.•CRW modeling tool to guide design of SFR during the conception phase regarding safety.•Fuel cladding heat exchange coefficient and impact on transients over power.•Neutronics simplified simulation of flux sha