Identification of initiating events for pressurized water reactor accidents

Abstract

In order to aid operators in identifying the different initiating events as defined in the Final Safety Analysis Report (FSAR), we develop a novel identification procedure. The procedure is based on the monitoring of three key system parameters in a pressurized water reactor (PWR), i.e., the pressure, the average temperature, and the temperature difference of the hot-leg and cold-leg of the reactor coolant system. By monitoring the system thermal state diagram in a pressure–temperature space, an operator can easily identify what initiating event is taking place while a static point in the diagram starts to move. The event data pool is first established by storing the transient analysis results for events of different types using the optimal estimated RELAP5 model. Since the variation ranges of system key parameters at a specific time represent the specific character for each initiating event, the identification procedure can easily determine which cases in which the event data pool can be fitted to on-line data using only variation range comparison without complex calculations. This identification method is believed to be able to help the plant operator to identify the different events and then execute the Emergency Operating Procedure more effectively.