• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.219-228
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• 1983

The blowdown history of the TMI-2 accident up to the isolation of the relief valve associated with a small break LOCA is reviewed briefly. An analysis is made to determine what instruments should be added in the core in order to prevent core damage in the case of the TMI-2 accident. With the added instruments a procedure is presented on how to predict the uncovered level of the core and how to calculate operator time margin. Sample calculations are done for the TMI-2 accident to determine the uncovered level and operator time margin. Finally, the map to show the uncovered level of the core and operator time margin is drawn with measurable parameters by the above methods.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Pressure Vessels and Piping
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.13-19
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• 2008

In order to predict a remaining life of a plant, it is necessary to select the components that are critical to the plant life. The remaining life of those components shall be evaluated by considering the aging effect of materials used as well as numerous factors. However, when evaluating reliability of nuclear structural components, some problems are quite formidable because of lack of information such as operating history, material property change and uncertainty in damage models. Accordingly, if structural integrity and safety are evaluated by the deterministic fracture mechanics approach, it is expected that the results obtained are too conservative to perform a rational evaluation of plant life. The probabilistic fracture mechanics approaches are regarded as appropriate methods to rationally evaluate the plant life since they can consider various uncertainties such as sizes and shapes of cracks and degradation of material strength due to the aging effects. The objective of this study is to evaluate the structural integrity for a reactor pressure vessel under the small break loss of coolant accident by applying the deterministic and probabilistic fracture mechanics. The deterministic fracture mechanics analysis was performed using the three dimensional finite element model. The probabilistic integrity analysis was based on the Monte Carlo simulation. The selected random variables are the neutron fluence on the vessel inside surface, the content of copper, nickel, and phosphorus in the reactor pressure vessel material, and initial RTNDT.