Analyses of High Pressure Molten Debris Dispersion for a Typical PWR Plant

Abstract

In such severe core damage accident, as small LOCAs with no ECCS injection or station blackout, in which the primary reactor system remains pressurized during core melt down, certain modes of vessel failure would lead to a high pressure ejection of molten core material. In case of a local failure of the lower head, the molten materials would initially be ejected into the cavity beneath the pressure vessel may subsequently be swept out from the cavity to the containment atmosphere and it might cause the early containment failure by direct contact of containment steel liner with core debris. When the contribution of a high-pressure scenario in a core damage frequency increases, early conditional containment failure probability may become large. In the present study, the verification analysis of PHOENICS code and the combining analysis with MELCOR and PHEONICS codes were performed to examine the debris dispersion behavior during high pressure melt ejection. The PHOENICS code which can treat thermal hydraulic phenomena, was applied to the verification analysis for melt dispersion experiments conducted by the Purdue university in the United States. A low pressure melt dispersion experiment at initial pressure 1.4MPas used metal woods as a molten material was simulated. The analytical results with molten debris dispersion mostly from the model reactor cavity compartment showed an agreement with the experimental result, but the analysis result of a volumetric median diameter of the airborne debris droplets was estimated about 1.5 times of the experimental result. The injection rates of molten debris and steam after reactor vessel failure for a typical PWR plant were analyzed using the MELCOR code. In addition, PHOENICS was applied to a 3D analysis for debris dispersion with low primary pressure at the reactor vessel failure. The analysis result showed that almost all the molten debris were dispersed from the reactor vessel cavity compartment by about 45 seconds after the start of steam release.