Transient accident analysis of the glovebox system in a large process room

Local transient hydrogen concentrations were evaluated inside a large process room when the hydrogen gas was released by three postulated accident scenarios associated with the process tank leakage and fire leading to a loss of gas confinement. The three cases considered in this work were fire in a room, loss of confinement from a process tank, and loss of confinement coupled with fire event. Based on these accident scenarios in a large and unventilated process room, the modeling calculations of the hydrogen migration were performed to estimate local transient concentrations of hydrogen due to the sudden leakage and release from a glovebox system associated with the process tank. The modeling domain represented the major features of the process room including the principal release or leakage source of gas storage system. The model was benchmarked against the literature results for key phenomena such as natural convection, turbulent behavior, gas mixing due to jet entrainment, and radiation cooling because these phenomena are closely related to the gas driving mechanisms within a large air space of the process room. The modeling results showed that at the corner of the process room, the gas concentrations migrated by the Case 2 and Case 3 scenarios reached the set-point value of high activity alarm in about 13 seconds, while the Case 1 scenario takes about 90 seconds to reach the concentration. The modeling results were used to estimate transient radioactive gas migrations in an enclosed process room installed with high activity alarm monitor when the postulated leakage scenarios are initiated without room ventilation. (authors)