Primary circuit iodine model addition to IMPAIR-3

As part of a continuing effort to provide the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Advanced Reactor Severe Accident Program (ARSAP) with complete iodine analysis capability, a task was undertaken to expand the modeling of IMPAIR-3, an iodine chemistry code. The expanded code will enable the DOE to include detailed iodine behavior in the assessment of severe accident source terms used in the licensing of U.S. Advanced Light Water Reactors (ALWRs). IMPAIR-3 was developed at the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI), Switzerland, and has been used by ARSAP for the past two years to analyze containment iodine chemistry for ALWR source term analyses. IMPAIR-3 is primarily a containment code but the iodine chemistry inside the primary circuit (the Reactor Coolant System or RCS) may influence the iodine species released into the the containment; therefore, a RCS iodine chemistry model must be implemented in IMPAIR-3 to ensure thorough source term analysis. The ARSAP source term team and the PSI IMPAIR-3 developers are working together to accomplish this task. This cooperation is divided into two phases. Phase I, taking place in 1996, involves developing a stand-alone RCS iodine chemistry program called IMPRCS (IMPAIR -Reactor Coolant System). This program models a number of the chemical and physical processes of iodine that are thought to be important at conditions of high temperature and pressure in the RCS. In Phase II, which is tentatively scheduled for 1997, IMPRCS will be implemented as a subroutine in IMPAIR-3. To ensure an efficient calculation, an interface/tracking system will be developed to control the use of the RCS model from the containment model. These two models will be interfaced in such a way that once the iodine is released from the RCS, it will no longer be tracked by the RCS model but will be tracked by the containment model. All RCS thermal-hydraulic parameters will be provided by other codes. (author) figs., tabs., refs