Nuclear Power Plant Mechanical Component Flooding Fragility Experiments Status

Abstract

This report describes progress on Nuclear Power Plant mechanical component flooding fragility experiments and supporting research. The progress includes execution of full scale fragility experiments using hollow-core doors, design of improvements to the Portal Evaluation Tank, equipment procurement and initial installation of PET improvements, designation of experiments exploiting the improved PET capabilities, fragility mathematical model development, Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamic simulations, wave impact simulation device research, and pipe rupture mechanics research.

Research to Develop Flood Barrier Testing Strategies for Nuclear Power Plants

“…• Publications by INL and Idaho State University (ISU) on component flooding fragility experiments conducted at ISU's Component Flooding Evaluation Lab [32] [33]…”

“…ISU is engaged in the design, development, construction, and operation of flood barrier testing [32] [33] facilities. To obtain an understanding of flood barrier failure, the Portal Evaluation Tank (PET) was designed to test non-contaminated items and collect empirical data on flood barrier integrity in relation to various flooding parameters.…”

“…Component flooding fragility experiments conducted at the ISU flood testing facility are described in publicly available technical reports and peer-reviewed papers (e.g., [32] and [33]). Barriers evaluated at this facility consist of different types of doors.…”

“…As documented in [32] and [33], non-watertight doors, commonly found in NPPs, were tested to determine their performance under flooding conditions. Flood tests were conducted at the ISU flood testing facility described in Section 5.3.…”