Safety Analysis of a Loss-Of-Coolant Accident in a Breeding Blanket for Experimental Fusion Reactors

1985 ◽  
Vol 8 (1P2B) ◽  
pp. 1415-1420 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. Rocco ◽  
V. Renda ◽  
L. Papa ◽  
G. Pautasso ◽  
G. Casini ◽  
...  
Author(s):  
Martina Adorni ◽  
Alessandro Del Nevo ◽  
Francesco D’Auria

Licensing requirements vary by country in terms of their scope, range of applicability and numerical values and may imply the use of system thermal hydraulic computer codes. Depending on the specific event scenario and on the purpose of the analysis, it might be required the availability of calculation methods that are not implemented in the standard system thermal hydraulic codes, as for burst temperature, burst strain and flow blockage calculations. This may imply the use of a dedicated fuel rod thermo-mechanical computer code, which can be coupled with thermal-hydraulic system and neutron kinetic codes to be used for the safety analysis. This paper describes the development and the application of a methodology for the analysis of the Large Break Loss of Coolant Accident (LB-LOCA) scenario in Atucha-2 Nuclear Power Plant (NPP), focusing on the procedure adopted for the use of the fuel rod thermo-mechanical code and its application for the safety analysis (Chapter 15 Final Safety Analysis Report, FSAR). The methodology implies the application of best estimate thermal-hydraulic, neutron physics and fuel pin performance computer codes, with the objective to verify the compliance with the specific acceptance criteria. The fuel pin performance code is applied with the main objective to evaluate the extent of cladding failures during the transient. A strong effort has been performed in order to enhance the fuel behaviour code capabilities and to improve the reliability of the code results.


Author(s):  
Pan Wu ◽  
Junli Gou ◽  
Jianqiang Shan ◽  
Bo Zhang ◽  
Xiang Li

This paper describes the preliminary safety analysis of a thermal-spectrum SCWR concept (CSR1000), which was proposed by Nuclear Power Institute of China (NPIC). The passive safety system and the design of the two-pass core concept characterize the safety performance of CSR1000. With code SCTRAN (a one-dimensional safety analysis code for SCWRs), loss of coolant flow accidents (LOFA) and loss of coolant accident (LOCA) as well as some other typical transients and accidents were analysed. The maximum cladding surface temperature (MCST) was regarded as an important criterion. The sensitivity analyses of some crucial parameters are helpful for the safety evaluation. Thus some parameters about the safety system and the actuation conditions, such as the delay time of the ADS actuation, the break area in LOCA analysis, were also involved in this paper. The analyses have shown that the proposed passive safety system is capable to mitigate the consequence of the selected abnormalities. The results will be a useful reference for the future development of CSR1000.


Author(s):  
Jeongik Lee ◽  
Pradip Saha ◽  
Mujid S. Kazimi ◽  
Won-Jae Lee

The “Whole Assembly Seed and Blanket” (WASB) design, which utilizes mostly thorium in the blanket, consists of 84 seed and 109 blanket assemblies which may be backfitted into existing Pressurized Water Reactors (PWRs). Since the seed assemblies produce significantly more power than the blanket assemblies, a preliminary safety analysis of this design has been performed. Three accidents/transients (Large Break Loss of Coolant Accident (LBLOCA), Complete Loss of Primary Flow (LOPF) and Loss of Off-site Power (LOSP)), have been analyzed for both the WASB design and a typical all UO2 design for a typical 4-Loop Westinghouse PWR plant. LBLOCA results show that the peak cladding temperature (PCT) for the WASB design is approximately 260 K higher than that for a typical PWR design. However, this higher PCT for the WASB design is still about 200 K lower than the present regulatory safety limit. The response of the WASB and all UO2 core for LOPF and LOSP transients are very similar, and no post-DNB type rapid cladding temperature rise was observed in either of the two calculations.


2015 ◽  
Vol 2015 ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Bruno Gonfiotti ◽  
Sandro Paci

As for Light Water Reactors (LWRs), one of the most challenging accidents for the future DEMOnstration power plant is the Loss of Coolant Accident, which can trigger the pressurization of the confinement structures and components. Hence, careful analyses have to be executed to demonstrate that the confinement barriers are able to withstand the pressure peak within design limits and the residual cooling capabilities of the Primary Heat Transfer System are sufficient to remove the decay heat. To do so, severe accident codes, as MELCOR, can be employed. In detail, the MELCOR code has been developed to cope also with fusion reactors, but unfortunately, these fusion versions are based on the old 1.8.x source code. On the contrary, for LWRs, the newest 2.1.x versions are continuously updated. Thanks to the new features introduced in these latest 2.1.x versions, the main phenomena occurring in the helium-cooled blanket concepts of DEMO can be simulated in a basic manner. For this purpose, several analyses during normal and accidental DEMO conditions have been executed. The aim of these analyses is to compare the results obtained with MELCOR 1.8.2 and MELCOR 2.1 in order to highlight the differences among the results of the main thermal-hydraulic parameters.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 1442
Author(s):  
Sanggil Park ◽  
Jaeyoung Lee ◽  
Min Bum Park

The temperature of zirconium alloy cladding on the postulated spent nuclear fuel pool complete loss of coolant accident is abruptly increased at a certain time and the cladding is almost fully oxidized to weak ZrO2 in the air. This abrupt temperature escalation phenomenon induced by the air-oxidation breakaway is called a zirconium fire. Although an air-oxidation breakaway kinetic model correlated between time and temperature has been implemented in the MELCOR code, it is likely to bring about unexpected large errors because of many limitations of model derivation. This study suggests an improved time–temperature correlated kinetic model using the Johnson–Mehl equation. It is based on that the air-oxidation breakaway is initiated by the phase transformation from the tetragonal to monoclinic ZrO2 at the oxide–metal interface in the cladding. This new model equation is also evaluated with the Zry-4 air-oxidation literature data. This equation resulted in the almost similar air-oxidation breakaway timing to the actual experimental data at 800 °C. However, at 1000 °C, it showed an error of about 8 min. This could be inferred from the influence of the ZrN phase change due to the nitrogen existing in air.


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