Thermal and dynamic loads on the EPR containment due to hydrogen combustion

A major aspect of the EPR safety concept is to cope with severe accidents including core melt and to maintain the integrity of the containment even for those hypothetical events. One potential threat for the containment is related to the combustion of hydrogen, which may be produced in a large amount during core degradation. The European Pressurized Water Reactor (EPR) hydrogen mitigation concept consists of about 44 recombiners, located mainly in the equipment rooms (only 4 recombiners are located in the dome area). This paper is devoted to two important potential threats on the containment related to hydrogen removal: - Thermal loads resulting from recombiner action and/or combustion are of importance also with respect to the integrity of the local composite liner foreseen at some crucial locations of the containment; - Dynamic loads resulting from fast deflagration may impair containment wall or internal walls even if the AICC (adiabatic isochoric complete combustion) pressure is below the design pressure. Two types of combustion calculations have been performed: a) In cases, where fast deflagration cannot be excluded, combustion has been calculated with COM3D, a special CFD code developed to calculate dynamic pressure loads on walls, and b) 'Standing flame' combustion as well as recombination processes have been calculated with GASFLOW for bounding scenarios in order to evaluate maximum containment wall surface temperatures for cases of long-lasting combustion, mainly with emphasis on the application of a partial liner. Because of the depressurization of the reactor coolant system directly into the containment atmosphere via a relief tank and rupture discs a high concentration of steam is available for nearly all scenarios. For these scenarios no threat to internal walls is expected based on the combustion loads identified by the analyses presented here. In case of fast secondary cool-down a large amount of energy is removed to the secondary side of the SG and less steam is available in the containment. As a consequence, combustion, even in case of low hydrogen release rate, is more violent and causes high pressure loads to dead end rooms