Severe Accident Analysis for Containment Filtered Venting System Design

Basic idea of containment venting is to relieve the pressure inside of the containment by establishing a flow path to the external environment. After TMI accident, many countries (Sweden, Germany, France) requires containment venting system like FCVS (filtered containment venting system), which can allow for the release of the over-pressure through a scrubber normally containing water and chemicals to reduce the radioactive material releases to the environment. It is also important to optimize the vent line size to prevent additional risk of leakage and to install at the site with limited space availability. This study examines the thermodynamic behavior due to different vent strategies for a large PWR during severe accidents for the OPR1000 Korea nuclear power plant. The representative accident scenario is identified and the sensitivity analysis with varying conditions (i. e. vent line size and vent initiation pressure) is conducted by using numerical simulation. The effects of venting during the severe accident with containment pressurization are examined. The accident scenarios are selected by using both of the qualitative judgement and the preliminary calculations and the sensitivity analysis on vent line size and vent initiation timing is conducted. As a result, the general trend of containment behavior due to venting can be found. Summarizing the findings, two conflict trends are found: - The maximum discharged flow rate would be higher as the vent line size and vent opening pressure increases. - The decay heat and the aerosol mass delivered to CFVS would be higher as the vent line size and vent opening pressure decreases. Regarding the flow rate, decay heat and aerosol mass are important factor for CFVS design, it would be necessary to find the optimum design specification with economical and regulatory considerations