Uncertainties impact on the major FOMs for severe accidents in CANDU 6 nuclear power plant

Abstract

In the nuclear safety studies, a new trend refers to the evaluation of uncertainties as a mandatory component of best-estimate safety analysis which is a modern and technically consistent approach being known as BEPU (Best Estimate Plus Uncertainty).The major objectives of this study consist in performing a study of uncertainties/sensitivities of the major analysis results for a generic CANDU 6 Nuclear Power Plant during Station Blackout (SBO) progression to understand and characterize the sources of uncertainties and their effects on the key figure-of-merits (FOMs) predictions in severe accidents (SA).The FOMs of interest are hydrogen mass generation and event timings such as the first fuel channel failure time, beginning of the core disassembly time, core collapse time and calandria vessel failure time. The outcomes of the study, will allow an improvement of capabilities and expertise to perform uncertainty and sensitivity analysis with severe accident codes for CANDU 6 Nuclear Power Plant.