Containment venting as a mitigation technique for BWR MARK I plant ATWS

Abstract

Containment venting is studied as a mitigation strategy for preventing or delaying severe fuel damage following hypothetical BWR Anticipated Transient Without Scram (ATWS) accidents initiated by MSIV-closure, and compounded by failure of the Standby Liquid Control (SLC) system injection of sodium pentaborate solution and by the failure of manually initiated control rod insertion. The venting of primary containment after reaching 75 psia (0.52 MPa) is found to result in the release of the vented steam inside the reactor building, and to result in inadequate Net Positive Suction Head (NPSH) for any system pumping from the pressure suppression pool. CONTAIN code calculations show that personnel access to large portions of the reactor building would be lost soon after the initiation of venting and that the temperatures reached would be likely to result in independent equipment failures. It is concluded that containment venting would be more likely to cause or to hasten the onset of severe fuel damage than to prevent or to delay it. Two alternative strategies that do not require containment venting, but that could delay or prevent severe fuel damage, are analyzed. BWR-LTAS code results are presented for a successful mitigation strategy in which the reactor vessel is depressurized, and for one in which the reactor vessel remains at pressure. For both cases the operators are assumed to take action to intentionally restrict injected flow such that fuel in the upper part of the core would be steam cooled. Resulting fuel temperatures are estimated with an off-line calculation and found to be acceptable.