• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.44 no.7
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• pp.709-718
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• 2012

The pressurized water reactor APR1400 adopts DVI (Direct Vessel Injection) for the emergency cooling water in the upper downcomer annulus. The International Standard Problem number 50 (ISP-50) was launched with the aim to investigate thermal hydraulic phenomena during a 50% DVI line break scenario with best estimate codes making use of the experimental data available from the ATLAS facility located at KAERI. The present work describes the calculation results obtained for the ISP-50 using the RELAP5/MOD3.3 system code. The work aims at validation and assessment of the code to reproduce the observed phenomena and investigate about its limitations to predict complicated mixing phenomena between the subcooled emergency cooling water and the two-phase flow in the downcomer. The obtained results show that the overall trends of the main test variables are well reproduced by the calculations. In particular, the pressure in the primary system show excellent agreement with the experiment. The loop seal clearance phenomenon was observed in the calculation and it was found to have an important influence on the transient progression. Moreover, the collapsed water levels in the core are accurately reproduced in the simulations. However, the drop in the downcomer level before the activation of the DVI from safety injection tanks was underestimated due to multi-dimensional phenomena in the downcomer that are not properly captured by one-dimensional simulations.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.43 no.1
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• pp.25-44
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• 2011

KAERI has been operating an integral effect test facility, ATLAS (Advanced Thermal-Hydraulic Test Loop for Accident Simulation), for accident simulations of advanced PWRs. Regarding integral effect tests, a database for major design basis accidents has been accumulated and a Domestic Standard Problem (DSP) exercise using the ATLAS has been proposed and successfully performed. The ATLAS DSP aims at the effective utilization of an integral effect database obtained from the ATLAS, the establishment of a cooperative framework in the domestic nuclear industry, better understanding of thermal hydraulic phenomena, and an investigation of the potential limitations of the existing best-estimate safety analysis codes. For the first ATLAS DSP exercise (DSP-01), integral effect test data for a 100% DVI line break accident of the APR1400 was selected by considering its technical importance and by incorporating comments from participants. Twelve domestic organizations joined in this DSP-01 exercise. Finally, ten of these organizations submitted their calculation results. This ATLAS DSP-01 exercise progressed as an open calculation; the integral effect test data was delivered to the participants prior to the code calculations. The MARS-KS was favored by most participants but the RELAP5/MOD3.3 code was also used by a few participants. This paper presents all the information of the DSP-01 exercise as well as the comparison results between the calculations and the test data. Lessons learned from the first DSP-01 are presented and recommendations for code users as well as for developers are suggested.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.45 no.2
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• pp.179-190
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• 2013

A station blackout experiment called SBO-01 was performed at the ATLAS facility. From the SBO-01 test, the station blackout scenario can be characterized into two typical phases: A first phase characterized by decay heat removal through secondary safety valves until the SG dryouts, and a second phase characterized by an energy release through a blowdown of the primary system after the SG dryouts. During the second phase, some physical phenomena of the change over a pressurizer function, i.e., the pressurizer being full before the POSRV $1^{st}$ opening and then its function being taken by the RV, and the termination of normal natural circulation flow were identified. Finally, a core heatup occurred at a low core water level, although under a significant amount of PZR inventory, whose drainage seemed to be hindered owing to the pressurizer function by the RV. The transient of SBO-01 is well reproduced in the calculation using the MARS code.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.36 no.3
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• pp.74-80
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• 2021

Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute (KAERI) has been operating an integral effects test facility, the Advanced Thermal-Hydraulic Test Loop for Accident Simulation (ATLAS), according to APR1400 for transient experimental and design basis accident simulation. Moreover, based on the experimental data, the domestic standard problem (DSP) program has been conducted in Korea to validate system codes. Recently, through DSP-05, the performance of the passive auxiliary feedwater system (PAFS) in the event of multiple steam generator tube rupture (MSGTR) has been analyzed. However, some errors exist in the reference input model distributed for DSP-05. Furthermore, the calculation results of the heat loss correlation for the secondary system presented in the technical report of the reference indicate that a large difference is present in heat loss from the target value. Thus, in this study, the reference model is corrected using the geometric information from the design report and drawings of ATLAS. Additionally, a new heat loss correlation is suggested by fitting the results of the heat loss tests. Herein, MSGTR-PAFS accident analysis is performed using MARS-KS 1.5 with the improved model. The steady-state calculation results do not significantly differ from the experimental values, and the overall physical behavior of the transient state is properly predicted. Particularly, the predicted operating time of PAFS is similar to the experimental results obtained by the modified model. Furthermore, the operating time of PAFS varies according to the heat loss of the secondary system, and the sensitivity analysis results for the heat loss of the secondary system are presented.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.52 no.9
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• pp.1926-1938
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• 2020

We validated the performance of RELAP MOD3.3 code regarding the hybrid SIT with available experimental data. The concept of the hybrid SIT is to connect the pressurizer to SIT to utilize the water inside SIT in the case of SBO or SB-LOCA combined with TLOFW. We investigated how well RELAP5 code predicts the physical phenomena in terms of the equilibrium time, stratification, condensation against Separate Effect Test (SET) data. We also conducted the validation of RELAP5 code against Integrated Effect Test (IET) experimental data produced by the ATLAS facility. We followed conventional approach for code validation of IET data, which are pre-test and post-test calculation. RELAP5 code shows substantial difference with changing number of nodes. The increase of the number of nodes tends to reduce the condensation rate at the interface between liquid and vapor inside the hybrid SIT. The environmental heat loss also contributes to the large discrepancy between the simulation results of RELAP5 and the experimental data.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.44 no.6
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• pp.587-596
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• 2012

The present paper deals with the participation of the University of Pisa in the last International Standard Problem (ISP) focused on system thermal hydraulic, which was led by the Korean Atomic Energy Research Institution (KAERI). The selected test was a Direct Vessel Injection (DVI) line break carried out at the ATLAS facility. University of Pisa participated, together with other eighteen institutions, in both blind and open phase of the analytical exercise pursuing its methodology for developing and qualifying a nodalization. Qualitative and quantitative analysis of the code results have been performed for both ISP-50 phases, the latter adopting the Fast Fourier Transfer Based Method (FFTBM). The experiment has been characterized by three-dimensional behavior in downcomer and core region. Even though an attempt to reproduce these phenomena, by developing a fictitious three-dimensional nodalization has been realized, the obtained results were generally acceptable but not fully satisfactory in replicating 3D behavior.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.44 no.6
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• pp.597-610
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• 2012

The passive auxiliary feedwater system (PAFS) is one of the advanced safety features adopted in the APR+, which is intended to completely replace the conventional active auxiliary feedwater system. With an aim of validating the cooling and operational performance of PAFS, an experimental program is in progress at KAERI, which is composed of two kinds of tests; the separate effect test and the integral effect test. The separate effect test, PASCAL ($\underline{P}$AF$\underline{S}$ $\underline{C}$ondensing Heat Removal $\underline{A}$ssessment $\underline{L}$oop), is being performed to experimentally investigate the condensation heat transfer and natural convection phenomena in PAFS. A single, nearly-horizontal U-tube, whose dimensions are the same as the prototypic U-tube of the APR+ PAFS, is simulated in the PASCAL test. The PASCAL experimental result showed that the present design of PAFS satisfied the heat removal requirement for cooling down the reactor core during the anticipated accident transients. The integral effect test is in progress to confirm the operational performance of PAFS, coupled with the reactor coolant systems using the ATLAS facility. As the first integral effect test, an FLB (feedwater line break) accident was simulated for the APR+. From the integral effect test result, it could be concluded that the APR+ has the capability of coping with the hypothetical FLB accident by adopting PAFS and proper set-points of its operation.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.37 no.5
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• pp.80-88
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• 2022

The Korean nuclear industry had developed the SPACE (Safety and Performance Analysis Code for nuclear power plants) code, which adopts a two-fluid, three-field model that is comprised of gas, continuous liquid and droplet fields and has the capability to simulate three-dimensional models. According to the revised law by the Nuclear Safety and Security Commission (NSSC) in Korea, the multiple failure accidents that must be considered for the accident management plan of a nuclear power plant was determined based on the lessons learned from the Fukushima accident. Generally, to improve the reliability of the calculation results of a safety analysis code, verification is required for the separate and integral effect experiments. Therefore, the goal of this work is to verify the calculation capability of the SPACE code for multiple failure accidents. For this purpose, an experiment was conducted to simulate a Control Element Drive Mechanism (CEDM) break with a safety injection failure using the ATLAS test facility, which is operated by Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute (KAERI). This experiment focused on the comparison between the experiment results and code calculation results to verify the performance of the SPACE code. The results of the overall system transient response using the SPACE code showed similar trends with the experimental results for parameters such as the system pressure, mass flow rate, and collapsed water level in component. In conclusion, it can be concluded that the SPACE code has sufficient capability to simulate a CEDM break with a safety injection failure accident.