Analysis of safety margin of in-vessel retention for AP1000

Abstract

In-vessel retention (IVR) of core melt is a key severe accident management strategy adopted by most operating nuclear power plants and advanced light water reactors (ALWRs), AP600, AP1000, etc. External reactor vessel cooling (ERVC) is a novel severe accident management for IVR analysis. In present study, IVR analysis code in severe accident (IVRASA) has been developed to evaluate the safety margin of IVR in AP1000 with anticipative depressurization and reactor cavity flooding in severe accident. For, IVRASA, the point estimate procedure has been developed for modeling the steady-state endpoint of two core melt configurations: Configuration I and Configuration II. The results of benchmark calculations of AP600 by IVRASA were consistent with those of the UCSB and INEEL. Then, IVRASA is used to calculate the heat transfer process caused by two core melt configurations of AP1000. The results of calculations of Configuration I indicate that the heat flux remains below the critical heat flux (CHF), however, the sensitivity calculations show that the heat flux in the metallic layer could exceed the CHF because of the focusing effect due to the thin metallic layer. On the other hand, the results of calculations of Configuration II suggest that the thermal failure of the lower head at the bottom location is highly unlikely, but the heat flux in light metallic layer could be higher than that of base case due to the portion of metal partitioning into the lower head. This work also investigated the effect of the uncertainties of the CHF correlations on the analysis of IVR.