Containment pressure suppression system with functions of water injection and noncondensable gas confinement

An innovative concept of the pressure suppression system having functions of water injection and non-condensable gas confinement is developed for the next generation light water reactors (LWRs). The use of the system is advantageous for the mitigation of effects of the loss-of-coolant accidents (LOCAs) in 1) keeping the containment pressure as low as for the conventional LWRs, 2) injecting water to the containment for cooling the reactor pressure vessel (RPV) and/or flooding a break, and 3) confining the non-condensable gas in the drywell. The gas confinement function makes the system considerably suitable for reactor designs with passive cooling systems utilizing heat exchangers, such as the steam generator (SG) secondary side cooling system for an integral reactor, and the passive containment cooling system (PCCS), because it avoids adverse effects of non-condensable gas on the heat transfer performance during LOCAs. The usefulness of the developed concept is confirmed in the RELAP5/MOD3 code calculation. (author)