Application of the Method of Manufactured Solutions to a Close-Coupled Gas-Cooled Reactor and Brayton Cycle Power System

A representative design for a spacefaring nuclear power generation system is simulated, and that simulation is subjected to code verification by the method of manufactured solutions. The system under consideration is a gas-cooled reactor, simulated using point reactor kinetics with temperature and xenon reactivity feedback, with the cooling gas flowing directly through a regenerated Brayton cycle turbogenerator, simulated using enthalpy relations. This presents a unique challenge for the method of manufactured solutions, which typically deals with only a single set of coupled equations. Here, a set of coupled modules, each with a different structure for its governing equations, must be solved in a close-coupled manner. By selecting an appropriate set of forcing functions (inputs), the desired output from the entire coupled simulation may be generated with excellent accuracy.