Investigations on the gas distribution phenomena inside the containment system of LWRs

The importance of mixing and distribution phenomena of hydrogen gas in the reactor safety is emphasised in the advanced reactor concepts, that heavily rely upon the passive cooling systems during a typical severe accident sequence. An advanced methodology for evaluating the temporal and spatial distribution of non condensable gases, including the simulation of buoyancy-driven flows and the effects of the various ESFs activation, in a multi-compartment containment system of a LWR is reviewed. The methodology employs an analogy technique with electrical networks to determine the convection flows among the containment compartments and evaluates, inside a single node, the profile of the vertical concentrations of steam and non condensable gases. The application of the proposed models to simulate the gas distribution phenomena occurring in the HDR E11.2, in the FIPLOC-F2 and in the NUPEC M-7-1 tests demonstrates the importance of these models providing information about local details and spatial distribution. The main results from the post-test analysis performed to simulate the thermal-hydraulic responses of the above mentioned experiments are presented and demonstrate the improvements and the reduction of the error band with respect to the experimental data. This methodology allows to perform a realistic prediction of severe accident sequence inside the containment system of the actual and advanced passive generation of LWRs. (author). 14 refs., 11 figs