Nuclear Engineering and Technology

Korean Nuclear Society (한국원자력학회)
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Performance evaluation of an improved pool scrubbing system for thermally-induced steam generator tube rupture accident in OPR1000

  • Juhyeong Lee (Department of Nuclear Engineering, Hanyang University) ;
  • Byeonghee Lee (Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute) ;
  • Sung Joong Kim (Department of Nuclear Engineering, Hanyang University)
  • Received : 2023.04.12
  • Accepted : 2023.12.01
  • Published : 2024.04.25
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Abstract

An improved mitigation system for thermally-induced steam generator tube rupture accidents was introduced to prevent direct environmental release of fission products bypassing the containment in the OPR1000. This involves injecting bypassed steam into the containment, cooling, and decontaminating it using a water coolant tank. To evaluate its performance, a severe accident analysis was performed using the MELCOR 2.2 code for OPR1000. Simulation results show that the proposed system sufficiently prevented the release of radioactive nuclides (RNs) into the environment via containment injection. The pool scrubbing system effectively decontaminated the injected RN and consequently reduced the aerosol mass in the containment atmosphere. However, the decay heat of the collected RNs causes re-vaporization. To restrict the re-vaporization, an external water source was considered, where the decontamination performance was significantly improved, and the RNs were effectively isolated. However, due to the continuous evaporation of the feed water caused by decay heat, a substantial amount of steam is released into the containment. Despite the slight pressurization inside the containment by the injected and evaporated steam, the steam decreased the hydrogen mole fraction, thereby reducing the possibility of ignition.

Keywords

Acknowledgement

This work was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) grant funded by the Korea government (MSIT) (No. NRF2022M2D2A1A02061334) and the Korea Institute of Energy Technology Evaluation and Planning (KETEP) grant funded by the Korea government (Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy) (No.KETEP-20181510101970).

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