Adiabatic equilibrium models for direct containment heating

Probabilistic risk assessment (PRA) studies are being extended to include a wider spectrum of reactor plants than was considered in NUREG-1150. There is a need for simple direct containment heating (DCH) models that can be used for screening studies aimed at identifying potentially significant contributors to overall risk in individual nuclear power plants. This paper presents two adiabatic equilibrium models suitable for the task. The first, a single-cell model, places a true upper bound on DCH loads. This upper bound, however, often far exceeds reasonable expectations of containment loads based on CONTAIN calculations and experiment observations. In this paper, a two cell model is developed that captures the major mitigating feature of containment compartmentalization, thus providing more reasonable estimates of the containment load. Predictions of the equilibrium models are compared with experimental data from the Limited Flight Path test series conducted at Sandia National Laboratories