Today most software applications come with a graphical user interface, including U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission TRAC/RELAP Advanced Computational Engine (TRACE) best-estimate reactor system code. The graphical user interface is called Symbolic Nuclear Analysis Package (SNAP). The purpose of the present study was to assess the TRACE computer code and to assess the SNAP capabilities for input deck preparation and advanced presentation of the results. BETHSY 6.2 TC test was selected, which is 15.24 cm equivalent diameter horizontal cold leg break. For calculations the TRACE V5.0 Patch 1 and RELAP5/MOD3.3 Patch 4 were used. The RELAP5 legacy input deck was converted to TRACE input deck using SNAP. The RELAP5 and TRACE comparison to experimental data showed that TRACE results are as good as or better than the RELAP5 calculated results. The developed animation masks were of great help in comparison of results and investigating the calculated physical phenomena and processes. 1. Introduction The TRAC/RELAP Advanced Computational Engine (TRACE) is the latest in a series of advanced best-estimate reactor systems codes developed by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (US NRC) [1]. The advanced TRACE computer code comes with a graphical user interface (GUI) called SNAP (Symbolic Nuclear Analysis Package) [2], which is intended for pre- and postprocessing, running the codes, RELAP5 to TRACE input deck conversion, input deck database generation, and so forth. Also other advanced thermal-hydraulic codes, for example RELAP5-3D [3] and MARS come with GUI [4]. According to [4] MARS has a simple GUI, which is provided for program execution and to display the calculation results online. On the other hand, RELAP5-3D can also use SNAP as GUI. The advanced TRACE computer code is still under development and it will have all capabilities of RELAP5 [5]. Although the TRACE computer code is the future of US NRC, its use in countries members of Code Applications and Maintenance Program (CAMP) it is still not dominant against the RELAP5 computer code. Nevertheless, TRACE is now more and more used [6–8], also by RELAP5 users, because of better RELAP5 to TRACE conversion capability using SNAP as reported on CAMP meetings [9–11]. However, not much information is available in the open literature on RELAP5 to TRACE conversion. In general, the typical RELAP5 users start with RELAP5 legacy input deck, which is first automatically converted to TRACE input decks using SNAP and then manual corrections are done. Namely, much of efforts were done in the past to develop the RELAP5 input
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