MAAP5 simulation of the PWR severe accident induced by pressurizer safety valve stuck-open accident

Highlights: • The typical Chinese 1000 MW PWR is modeled with MAAP5. • Six cases with different analysis conditions are simulated for comparison. • The detailed severe accident process and accident sequence in different cases are achieved and contrastively analyzed. • The results are meaningful on the severe accident comprehension and management. - Abstract: The Modular Accident Analysis Program version 5 (MAAP5) is a computer code that can simulate the response of light water reactor power plants during severe accident sequences. The present work aims to simulate the severe accident of a typical Chinese pressure water reactor (PWR) with MAAP5. The pressurizer safety valve stuck-open accident is essentially a small break loss-of-coolant accident (SBLOCA), which becomes one of the major concerns on core melt initiating events of the PWR. Six cases with different assumptions in the pressurizer (PZR) safety valves (SVs) stuck-open accident stuck open accident were analyzed for comparison. The results of first three cases show that the severe accident sequence is correlated with the number of the stuck open valve. The primary system depressurized faster in a more SVs stuck open case, and the consequences in which is hence slighter. The remaining 3 cases along with the case 2 were then analyzed to study the effect of operator intervention to the accident. The results show that the auxiliary feed water (AFW) is effective to delay the core degradation and hence delayed the finally system recovery. The high pressure injection (HPI) operation and manually opening the steam generator (SG) SVs are effective to mitigate this kind of severe accident. The results are meaningful and significant for comprehending the detailed process of PWR severe accident, which is the basic standard for establishing the severe accident management guidelines.