Modifications to MELCOR 1.8.6 for modeling Accident Tolerant Fuel in Boiling Water Reactors

Humrickhouse, Paul W.; Merrill, B.J.

doi:10.2172/1495186

Cited by 5 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 1 publication

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“…One objective of ATF materials and associated designs is to minimize clad oxidation that causes hydrogen and heat generation resulting from zirconium-steam reactions by either replacing zirconium with another material altogether, or by coating it with one that has more favorable oxidation properties. The modeling of such alternative cladding and duplex coated claddings is facilitated using the User-Defined Generalized Coating version of MELCOR 1.8.6, which includes recent extensions to the oxidation and material property models made by INL (Humrickhouse & Merrill, 2018).…”

Section: Sbo Melcor Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evaluation of the Benefits of ATF, FLEX, and Passive Cooling System for an Enhanced Resilient PWR Model

Davis

Parisi

et al. 2019

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This report, along with report INL/EXT-19-53556 published in August 2019, documents the activities performed by Idaho National Laboratory (INL) during the fiscal year (FY) 2019 for the Department of Energy (DOE) Light Water Reactor Sustainability (LWRS) Program, Risk-Informed System Analysis (RISA) Pathway, Enhanced Resilient Plant (ERP) Systems research. The purpose of the RISA Pathway research and development is to support plant owner-operator decisions with the aim to improve the economics, reliability, and maintain the high levels of safety of current nuclear power plants over periods of extended plant operations. The concept of ERP refers to the combinations of Accident Tolerant Fuel (ATF), optimal use of Diverse and Flexible Coping Strategy (FLEX), enhancements to plant components and systems, and the incorporation of augmented or new passive cooling systems, as well as improved fuel cycle efficiency. The objective of the ERP research effort is to use the RISA methods and toolkit in industry applications, including methods development and early demonstration of technologies, in order to enhance existing reactors' safety features (both active and passive) and to substantially reduce operating costs through risk-informed approaches to plant design modifications to the plant and their characterization.Compared with the analysis documented in INL/EXT-19-53556, this report includes additional accident scenarios for risk-informed ATF analysis, and examines the risk impacts and benefits of FLEX and passive cooling system on nuclear power plants (NPPs) from other perspectives. The same analysis process, risk analysis approaches, and analysis tools as in FY 2018 were used for near-term ATF cladding (i.e., Iron-Chromium-Aluminum [FeCrAl] cladding and Chromium [Cr]-coated cladding) designs under the small-break loss-of-coolant accident (SBLOCA or SLOCA) including SBLOCA with anticipated transient without scram (ATWS) scenarios, two types of general transients (locked rotor and turbine trip) including locked rotor with ATWS scenarios, and main steam line break (MSLB) scenarios. For benchmarking purpose, University of Wisconsin compared the ATF station blackout (SBO) analysis results using RELAP5-3D as in the FY 2018 report INL/EXT-18-51436 with the results using MELCOR for the same SBO scenarios. In addition, based on the generic probabilistic risk assessment (PRA) model, the risk impacts and benefits of FLEX and the dynamic natural convection (DNC) system on NPPs are evaluated through a case study with the risk-informed decision-making process, i.e., significance determination process (SDP).In the ATF SBLOCA analysis, eight SBLOCA scenarios were developed based on the generic SAPHIRE PRA model for a Westinghouse three-loop pressurized water reactor (PWR) used in previous ERP analysis, and analyzed using RELAP5-3D for thermal hydraulic analysis with traditional fuel design and near-term ATF designs. The RELAP5-3D simulation results, as presented in Tables ES-1 and ES-2, show that the gain in coping time for FeCrAl var...

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Section: Sbo Melcor Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%