Post test calculations of a severe accident experiment for VVER-440 reactors by the ATHLET code

Abstract

Severe accident – if no mitigation action is taken – leads to core melt. An effective severe accident management strategy can be the external reactor pressure vessel cooling for corium localization and stabilization. For some time discussion was going on, whether the in-vessel retention can be applied for the VVER-440 type reactors. It had to be demonstrated that the available space between the reactor vessel and biological protection allows sufficient cooling to keep the melted core in the vessel, without the reactor pressure vessel losing its integrity. In order to demonstrate the feasibility of the concept an experimental facility was realized in Hungary. The facility called Cooling Effectiveness on the Reactor External Surface (CERES) is modeling the vessel external surface and the biological protection of Paks NPP. A model of the CERES facility for the ATHLET TH system code was developed. The results of the ATHLET calculation agree well with the measurements showing that the vessel cooling can be insured for a long time in a VVER-440 reactor.