The impact of emergency operating safety procedures on mitigation the nuclear thermal power plant severe accident

Abstract

The most important public concerns is the safety of nuclear power reactors. It is extremely important to protect the public from the nuclear radiation exposure in the undesired case of a nuclear power plant (NPP) accident. The proper performance of the safety systems of nuclear power plants is one of the most highly important concerns which enhances the use of nuclear energy options. This research paper focuses on the response and performance of the emergency safety systems of a pressurized water reactor (PWR) during loss of coolant accident (LOCA) for a selected reference PWR. The simulation depicts the reactor behavior during hot leg loss of coolant accident event and the leakage area is 200 cm2. This was accomplished by modeling the PWR and the passive safety systems employed using PCTran code which is designed to describe the emergency core cooling system (ECCS) response and core behavior under severe accident conditions. The ECCSs are designed to cool down the reactor core and to prevent core damage. Results of the core temperature distribution, reactor coolant inlet and outlet temperatures, reactor coolant mass flow rate, and other parameters have been compared with the reference data and demonstrated to be in good agreement with each other. This study demonstrates that the PCTran model is capable of contributing to the process of safety analysis of the NPP.