A study on design improvement of the emergency core cooling system for a nuclear ship reactor

ECCS performances are predicted for the N.S. ''MUTSU'' Reactor using new computing techniques. The actual performances are found to be inadequate with regard to the total injection flow rate and the infection head of the High Pressure Injection System (HPIS). The actual Safety Injection (SI) Signal is also shown to be inoperative in a gas phase LOCA. Because of this fact, the ECCS has been improved by replacing the existing HPIS with two large high pressure pumps and by adding ''Reactor Pressure Low-Low'' and ''Containment Pressure High'' signals. This report deals with a numerical study of the dynamical behavior of the N.S. MUTSU Reactor in the postulated small break LOCA, which has been calculated to verify the design improvement by evaluating the new ECCS performances on the basis of RELAP4/MOD6/SUS and TOODEE2/SUS codes. In conclusion, the improved system performs satisfactorily in the whole range of gas phase breaks and in the small break range of liquid phase LOCA. (author)