MAMBA Overview

MAMBA (MPO Advanced Model for Boron Analysis) simulates three-dimensional crud growth along the surface of fuel rods within Light Water Reactors. For Pressurized Water Reactors, MAMBA also simulates the boron uptake in the crud layer during cycle operation. MAMBA includes models for crud heat transfer and boiling, chemical kinetics and transport, chemistry thermodynamics (including boron solubility), and reactor primary system source term modeling for crud constituent release and tracking (e.g. Ni and Fe).

Contact Ben Collins at [email protected] or [email protected] for more information

Applications and Integrations

MAMBA calculations include crud induced power shift (CIPS), which is the adverse effect on nuclear power distribution due to boron uptake in the crud layer, and crud induced localized corrosion analysis which can have an adverse effect on fuel performance.

MAMBA is tightly coupled to the neutron transport code, MPACT and the thermal-hydraulics code within the VERA code suite. 

Planned capabilities for the future include:

Current development activities are focused on use of physics-based calibration methods utilizing operating reactor flux map data for determination of unknown crud model parameters.  

MAMBA References

1. V. Petrov, B. Kendrick, D. Walter, A. Manera and J. Secker, “Prediction of CRUD deposition on PWR fuel using a state-of-the-art CFD-based multi-physics computational tool,” NED 299 (2016) 95.
2. J. Deshon, D. Husssey, B. Kendrick, J. McGurk, J. Secker, M. Short, “Pressurized water reactor fuel crud and corrosion modeling,” Journal of Materials 63 (2011) 64.
3. B. Collins, B. Okhuysen, R. Salko, D. Andersson, S. Stimpson, T. Lange, A. Elliott, A. Wysocki, L. Gilkey, K. Epperson, R. Smith, “CASL Research and Development Activities and Results for the CRUD Induced Power Shift (CIPS) Challenge Problem,” CASL-U-2018-1703-000, September 2018.
4. B. Collins, W. Gurecky, A. Elliott, L. Gilkey, K. Coleman, R. Smith, D. Andersson, “Inference of Crud Model Parameters from Plant Data,” CASL-U-2019-1860-000, May 2019.
5. T. Lange, A. Godfrey, R. Ratnayake, K. Epperson, J. Eller, R. Salko, Preliminary CRUD Analysis and Sensitivity Studies for NuScale SMR, CASL-U-2018-1504-000, January 2018.
6. Godfrey, B. Collins, Core Design Optimization with CIPS Risk Analysis, CASL-U-2019-1906-000, September 2019.

MAMBA Images

3D CRUD thickness distribution

3D distribution of Boron hideout in the CRUD