Minimum containment pressure and its effect on ECCS performance of APR-1400

The containment pressure has a strong effect on the late reheat behavior for a large break LOCA, associated with the DVI issue. The downcomer boiling, which occurs during the post-reflood phase, has a negative effect on core cooling for a LBLOCA. Because the downcomer boiling is enhanced as the containment pressure decreases, how to determine containment pressure is important to the evaluation of ECCS performance. In spite of its importance of containment pressure, there are few studies on the containment pressure and the interaction between RCS and containment thermal hydraulics. To have a better knowledge of the effect of containment pressure on APR-1400 ECCS performance, a parametric study for containment pressure has been carried out. Also, the interaction between RCS and containment behavior has been also investigated