Universal treatment of plumes and stresses for pressurized thermal shock evaluations

Thermally-induced stresses in a reactor pressure vessel wall, as a result of high-pressure safety injection, are an essential component of integrated risk analyses of pressurized thermal shock transients. Limiting cooldowns arise when this injection occurs under stagnated loop conditions which, in turn, correspond to a rather narrow range (in size) of small-break loss-of-coolant accidents. Moreover, at these conditions, the flow is thermally stratified, and in addition to the global cooldown, one must be concerned about the additional cooling potential due to the downcomer plumes formed by the cold streams pouring out of the cold legs. In the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Integrated Pressurized Thermal Shock (IPTS) study, this stratification was calculated with the codes REMIX/NEWMIX. A comprehensive comparison with all available experimental data has currently been compiled. The stress analysis using this input was carried out at Oak Ridge National Laboratory using a one-dimensional approximation with the intent to conservatively bound the magnitude of thermal stresses