The ACRS Exposed the Myth of the EPRI Code RETRAN-3D

On Wednesday, July 14, 1999 (Bastille Day), the U. S. NRC’s Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards heard testimony by its member, Professor Graham Wallis.  Professor Wallis analyzed RETRAN-3D, which is a program for transient thermal-hydraulic analysis of complex fluid flow systems.

The discussions were detailed for several hours.  The Committee, informed by Professor Wallis, was not favorably impressed with the quality of RETRAN-3D.  Here is an excerpt from the transcript that displays the hostile exchange between EPRI's RETRAN-3 promoter and Professor Wallis.

MR. AGEE:  We feel that some of Dr. Wallis' statements
are very simply confusing the momentum and the nodal
balances of the equation.  These equations are straight 
out of Slattery and Bird, Stewart and Lightfoot. It's not 
simply EPRI's --  

DR. WALLIS: Can I comment on that, please? I have taught from Bird, Stewart and Lightfoot for about half my life, and I cannot find anything in Bird, Stewart and Lightfoot which is correctly being interpreted in the literature you gave me. 

MR. AGEE: This is fundamental --

DR. WALLIS: It's been misunderstood and misused, and it is wrong -- excuse me -- it is inappropriate to invoke Bird, Stewart, and Lightfoot as an authority for what was done.


Here is the link to the complete transcript of the above meeting and it is a significant disclosure 14 years later:

http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/acrs/tr/

fullcommittee/1999/ac990714.html 

http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/acrs/tr/fullcommittee/1999/ac990714.html

Here is another link from about a year after the above ACRS meeting:

http://pbadupws.nrc.gov/ML0101/ML010180099.pdf 

http://pbadupws.nrc.gov/docs/ML0101/ML010180099.pdf

http://pbadupws.nrc.gov/ML0101/ML010180099.pdf

This is interesting.  Here is the opening paragraph of NRC's documentation:

SUBJECT: SUMMARY OF MEETING WITH ELECTRIC POWER RESEARCH INSTITUTE TO DISCUSS REVIEW OF RETRAN 3-D

On November 3, 2000, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) met with the Electric
Power Research Institute (EPRI) to discuss the staff’s review of the RETRAN-3D computer
code. Attachment 1 is a list of attendees. During the meeting the staff discussed its conditions
and limitations for the use of RETRAN-3D. The code is under review by the staff for approval
for application to transients discussed in Chapter 15 of the Updated Final Safety Analysis
Reports for boiling water reactors and pressurized water reactors. The conditions and
limitations for the use of the code which were agreed upon by the staff and EPRI during the
meeting are listed in Attachment 2. 


It is an interesting document.  Actually, EPRI was not present at the meeting; only its Washington D. C. representative was present and it is unlikely that he had any awareness of much.  The nuclear power users of RETRAN-3D and their contractors were there.  The EPRI "developers" of RETRAN were not involved and they were not on the distribution of this memo. It would be interesting to know how all this got set up.  Here is the list of attendees.

LIST OF ATTENDEES
MEETING WITH EPRI TO DISCUSS REVIEW OF RETRAN-3D
NOVEMBER 3, 2000
 
Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI)
G. Vine
 
NRC
A. Attard
R. Caruso
R. Landry
L. Olshan
H. Scott
J. Staudenmeier
 
OTHER
T. George, Nuclear Management Company
M. Paulsen, Computer Simulation & Analysis, Inc.
G. Swindlehurst, Duke Power