Verification of revised EOP using the CATHENA code for Wolsong NPP- Candu 6

EOP (Emergency Operating Procedure) is the operating procedure document which describes the operator's action needed for the maintenance of nuclear power plant (NPP) safety when a certain accident takes place. EOPs of Wolsong NPP Units 2, 3, 4 (Candu 6) have been revised aiming at the optimization of procedure to recover the NPP from an accident and the minimization of human errors. The revised overall EOPs are composed of 2 EOPs describing the accident diagnosis and recovery of critical safety parameters and 13 EOPs describing the operator actions needed for the individual accidents which include LOCA and MSLB and so on. The purpose of the present study is to verify the revised EOPs if the procedures and operator actions described in each EOP are fully appropriate and effective for the safe shutdown of NPP leading to temperature low enough to start the long term cooling using the shutdown cooling system and for the maintenance of fuel and pressure boundary integrity. The verification was carried out with the deterministic safety analysis methodology using the CATHENA computer program which is a Thermalhydraulic numerical code used in the safety analysis of Candu 6 reactors. CATHENA can simulate the various thermalhydraulic behaviors which are expected to happen during each accident and by various operator actions. From the verification results it can be assured that the revised individual EOPs have the enough appropriateness with respect to the engineering aspects and effectiveness in view of fuel and pressure boundary integrity. (authors)