Severe accident code-to-code comparison for two accident scenarios in a spent fuel pool

Coindreau, Olivia; Jäckel, B.; Rocchi, Federico; Alcaro, Fabio; Angelova, D.; Bandini, G.; Barnák, M.; Behler, Matthias; Cruz, D. F. Da; Dagan, Ron; Drai, P.; Ederli, S.; Herranz, L.E.; Hollands, T.; Horváth, Gábor; Кaliatka, Аlgirdas; Kljenak, Ivo; Kotsuba, О.; Lind, Terttaliisa; López, Carlos F.; Mancheva, K.; Matejovič, Peter; Matkovič, Marko; Steinbrück, M.; Stempniewicz, M.M.; Thomas, Russell S.; Vileiniškis, Virginijus; Visser, D.C.; Vokáč, P.; Vorobyov, Yu.S.; Zhabin, O.

doi:10.1016/j.anucene.2018.06.043

Cited by 13 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 6 publications

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“…According to TEPCO data [5], Fukushima Daiichi unit 4 Spent Fuel Pool is a rectangular pool of dimensions 12.2 × 9.9 × 11.8 m, located in the upper part of a Mark I reactor building with a free volume of 25800 m 3 [6]. During normal operation, the water level inside the SFP is 11.5 m. When the Fukushima accident occurred, inside the SFP of unit 4 reactor, there were 1535 fuel assemblies divided into hot (548 FAs), cold (783 FAs), and fresh fuel (204 FAs) [2]. As shown in Figure 1, the fuel assemblies were stored in 53 different racks, with the average assembly decay heat pattern.…”

Section: Spent Fuel Pool Modelling Using Melcormentioning

confidence: 99%

“…After this accident which occurred in March 2011, international benchmark exercises were carried out to simulate the accident sequence and its consequences. Among them, one of the most important was in the framework of the NUGENIA+ project, carried out in 2015, in which participants investigated the Fukushima Daiichi occurrence of events by using different severe accident codes [2].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Analysis of Fukushima Daiichi unit 4 spent fuel pool using MELCOR

D’Onorio

Maggiacomo

Giannetti

et al. 2022

J. Phys.: Conf. Ser.

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A spent fuel pool is a temporary storage facility designed to store the nuclear fuel assemblies removed from the reactor core. Here, the depleted fuel is vertically arranged in racks structures, accurately spaced to ensure subcriticality safety margins. Until the events occurred at the Fukushima Daiichi power plants, severe accidents in spent fuel pools had never been considered as a major safety concern, mainly because of their slow progression. However, extremely unlikely accident events, aggravated by the loss of site power, highlighted the vulnerability of nuclear fuel stored within spent fuel pools. During these accident sequences, reactor fuel rods can generate enough decay heat to vaporize the coolant around them, causing, during unmitigated scenarios, the uncovering and melting of fuel bundles after several days. In past years, new features have been introduced in the MELCOR code for the evaluation of potential risks associated to accident progression in spent fuel pools. In this paper, the accidental sequence of a loss of cooling accident in a boiling water reactor spent fuel pool is analysed with version 2.2 of the MELCOR code. The spent fuel pool of the Fukushima Daiichi unit 4 has been selected as reference. Main accident events, such as fuel uncovering, claddings oxidation, hydrogen generation, and fission products release, have been analysed assuming the unavailability of safety systems.

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Section: Spent Fuel Pool Modelling Using Melcormentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Analysis of Fukushima Daiichi unit 4 spent fuel pool using MELCOR

D’Onorio

Maggiacomo

Giannetti

et al. 2022

J. Phys.: Conf. Ser.

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“…The same design and scenario will be studied by all partners: a loss-of-cooling accident that leads to fission product releases that are not too important and an SFP design similar to that of Unit 4 of the Fukushima Daichi NPP, set in the AIR-SFP NUGENIA+ project [22]. The utilized FOMs have been adapted to the scenarios, as in the case of the FPT1 exercise, and it was agreed that the transient scope will be limited to a moderate damage of spent fuel rods.…”

Section: Innovative Management Of Sfp Accidents (Wp6-imsfp)mentioning

confidence: 99%

The EC MUSA Project on Management and Uncertainty of Severe Accidents: Main Pillars and Status

et al. 2021

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In the current state of maturity of severe accident codes, the time has come to foster the systematic application of Best Estimate Plus Uncertainties (BEPU) in this domain. The overall objective of the HORIZON-2020 project on “Management and Uncertainties of Severe Accidents (MUSA)” is to quantify the uncertainties of severe accident codes (e.g., ASTEC, MAAP, MELCOR, and AC2) when modeling reactor and spent fuel pools accident scenarios of Gen II and Gen III reactor designs for the prediction of the radiological source term. To do so, different Uncertainty Quantification (UQ) methodologies are to be used for the uncertainty and sensitivity analysis. Innovative AM measures will be considered in performing these UQ analyses, in addition to initial/boundary conditions and model parameters, to assess their impact on the source term prediction. This paper synthesizes the major pillars and the overall structure of the MUSA project, as well as the expectations and the progress made over the first year and a half of operation.

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“…The severe risk of a zirconium fire to the environment was raised by Hippel and Schoeppner [3][4][5]. In addition, a number of spent fuel pool accident analyses were performed by several safety analyses codes such as MELCOR, MAAP, ASTEC, ATHLET-CD, ICARE/CATHARE, RELAP/SCDAPSIM, MAAP, and SPECTRA [6][7][8][9][10][11][12]. More recently, spent fuel pool accident scenarios were analyzed with most of the other mentioned safety analyses codes, and the trends of cladding temperature escalation due to the zirconium fire were not comparable with the various code analyses [12].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In addition, a number of spent fuel pool accident analyses were performed by several safety analyses codes such as MELCOR, MAAP, ASTEC, ATHLET-CD, ICARE/CATHARE, RELAP/SCDAPSIM, MAAP, and SPECTRA [6][7][8][9][10][11][12]. More recently, spent fuel pool accident scenarios were analyzed with most of the other mentioned safety analyses codes, and the trends of cladding temperature escalation due to the zirconium fire were not comparable with the various code analyses [12]. Several institutes also participated in the benchmark of zirconium fire that was observed in the SFP phase-1 experiments using the MELCOR code, and they captured the cladding temperature escalation in the zirconium fire relatively well [13].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Limitations of an Air-Oxidation Breakaway Model to Predict a Zirconium Fire in a Spent Nuclear Fuel Pool Accident

Park¹,

Park

2019

Sustainability

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The OECD/NEA Spent Fuel Pool (SFP) project was conducted to investigate consequences of spent nuclear fuel pool accident scenarios. From the project, it was observed that cladding temperature could abruptly increase at a certain point and the cladding was completely oxidized. This phenomenon was called a “zirconium fire”. This zirconium fire is one of the crucial concerns for spent fuel pool safety under a postulated loss of coolant accident scenario, since it would lead to an uncontrolled mass release of fission products into the environment. To capture this critical phenomenon, an air-oxidation breakaway model has been implemented in the MELCOR code. This study examines this air-oxidation breakaway model by comparing the SFP project test data with a series of MELCOR code sensitivity calculation results. The air-oxidation model parameters are slightly altered to investigate their sensitivities on the occurrence of the zirconium fire. Through such sensitivity analysis, limitations of the air-oxidation breakaway model are identified, and needs for model improvement is recommended.

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Severe accident code-to-code comparison for two accident scenarios in a spent fuel pool

Cited by 13 publications

References 6 publications

Analysis of Fukushima Daiichi unit 4 spent fuel pool using MELCOR

Analysis of Fukushima Daiichi unit 4 spent fuel pool using MELCOR

The EC MUSA Project on Management and Uncertainty of Severe Accidents: Main Pillars and Status

The Limitations of an Air-Oxidation Breakaway Model to Predict a Zirconium Fire in a Spent Nuclear Fuel Pool Accident

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