Assessment of passive safety system performance under main steam line break accident

Abstract

A generation III+Boiling Water Reactor (BWR) which relies on natural circulation has evolved from earlier BWR designs by incorporating passive safety features which require no emergency injection pump and no operator action or Alternating Current (AC) power supply. The generation III+BWR’s passive safety systems include the Automatic Depressurization System (ADS), the Suppression Pool (SP), the Standby Liquid Control System (SLCS), the Gravity Driven Cooling System (GDCS), the Isolation Condenser System (ICS), and the Passive Containment Cooling System (PCCS). The ADS is actuated to rapidly depressurize the reactor leading to the GDCS injection. The large amount of water in the SP condenses steam from the reactor. The SLCS provides makeup water to the reactor. The GDCS injects water into the reactor by gravity head and provides cooling to the core. The ICS and the PCCS are used to remove the decay heat from the reactor. The objective of this paper is to analyze the response of passive safety systems under the Loss of Coolant Accident (LOCA). A Main Steam Line Break (MSLB) test has been conducted in the Purdue University Multi-Dimensional Integral Test Assembly (PUMA) which is scaled to represent the generation III+BWR. The main results of PUMA MSLB test were that the reactor coolant level was well above the Top of Active Fuel (TAF) and the reactor containment pressure has remained below the design pressure. In particular, the minimum water level (1.706m) was 5% higher than the TAF (1.623m) and the containment maximum pressure (271kPa) was 35% lower than the safety limit (414kPa), respectively.