Numerical Analysis of Containment Response Under Accident Conditions

Abstract

On the basis of passive containment cooling system concept, the one-dimensional codes are developed for the analysis of containment thermal-hydraulic characteristics under accident conditions, which can be applied to deal with large dry concrete containment in nuclear power plant. In order to build up the hypothesis flowing path, the containment space is divided into a rising channel and downward ring during the geometric modeling process. In this paper, the physical models, the identification of solving methods and the verification of the codes are introduced. It is assumed that the control volumes take the adiabatic condition in addition to heat exchanger and breaks, and there is no exchange of mass, momentum and energy between each volume in the rising channel and corresponding volume in downward ring. In the analysis, we also assume that the heat in the containment can only be transferred through natural circulation by passive containment cooling system. Furthermore, the break is supposed in the center of bottom of the containment. In this paper, the responses of the containment are predicted with the codes under large LOCA scenario. Under the same conditions, the characteristics of the natural circulation are also analyzed through the codes for the passive containment cooling system. The results can provide some references for the design of the passive containment cooling system.