• Title/Summary/Keyword: nuclear power engineering

Search Result 3,830, Processing Time 0.042 seconds

Damage and vibrations of nuclear power plant buildings subjected to aircraft crash part II: Numerical simulations

  • Li, Z.R.;Li, Z.C.;Dong, Z.F.;Huang, T.;Lu, Y.G.;Rong, J.L.;Wu, H.
    • Nuclear Engineering and Technology
    • /
    • v.53 no.9
    • /
    • pp.3085-3099
    • /
    • 2021
  • Investigations of large commercial aircraft impact effect on nuclear power plant (NPP) buildings have been drawing extensive attentions, particularly after the 9/11 event, and this paper aims to numerically assess the damage and vibrations of NPP buildings subjected to aircrafts crash. In Part I of present paper, two shots of reduce-scaled model test of aircraft impact on NPP were conducted based on the large rocket sled loading test platform. In the present part, the numerical simulations of both scaled and prototype aircraft impact on NPP buildings are further performed by adopting the commercial program LS-DYNA. Firstly, the refined finite element (FE) models of both scaled aircraft and NPP models in Part I are established, and the model impact test is numerically simulated. The validities of the adopted numerical algorithm, constitutive model and the corresponding parameters are verified based on the experimental NPP model damages and accelerations. Then, the refined simulations of prototype A380 aircraft impact on a hypothetical NPP building are further carried out. It indicates that the NPP building can totally withstand the impact of A380 at a velocity of 150 m/s, while the accompanied intensive vibrations may still lead to different levels of damage on the nuclear related equipment. Referring to the guideline NEI07-13, a maximum acceleration contour is plotted and the shock damage propagation distances under aircraft impact are assessed, which indicates that the nuclear equipment located within 11.5 m from the impact point may endure malfunction. Finally, by respectively considering the rigid and deformable impacts mainly induced by aircraft engine and fuselage, an improved Riera function is proposed to predict the impact force of aircraft A380.

Development of an Accident Sequence Precursor Methodology and its Application to Significant Accident Precursors

  • Jang, Seunghyun;Park, Sunghyun;Jae, Moosung
    • Nuclear Engineering and Technology
    • /
    • v.49 no.2
    • /
    • pp.313-326
    • /
    • 2017
  • The systematic management of plant risk is crucial for enhancing the safety of nuclear power plants and for designing new nuclear power plants. Accident sequence precursor (ASP) analysis may be able to provide risk significance of operational experience by using probabilistic risk assessment to evaluate an operational event quantitatively in terms of its impact on core damage. In this study, an ASP methodology for two operation mode, full power and low power/shutdown operation, has been developed and applied to significant accident precursors that may occur during the operation of nuclear power plants. Two operational events, loss of feedwater and steam generator tube rupture, are identified as ASPs. Therefore, the ASP methodology developed in this study may contribute to identifying plant risk significance as well as to enhancing the safety of nuclear power plants by applying this methodology systematically.

A simple data assimilation method to improve atmospheric dispersion based on Lagrangian puff model

  • Li, Ke;Chen, Weihua;Liang, Manchun;Zhou, Jianqiu;Wang, Yunfu;He, Shuijun;Yang, Jie;Yang, Dandan;Shen, Hongmin;Wang, Xiangwei
    • Nuclear Engineering and Technology
    • /
    • v.53 no.7
    • /
    • pp.2377-2386
    • /
    • 2021
  • To model the atmospheric dispersion of radionuclides released from nuclear accident is very important for nuclear emergency. But the uncertainty of model parameters, such as source term and meteorological data, may significantly affect the prediction accuracy. Data assimilation (DA) is usually used to improve the model prediction with the measurements. The paper proposed a parameter bias transformation method combined with Lagrangian puff model to perform DA. The method uses the transformation of coordinates to approximate the effect of parameters bias. The uncertainty of four model parameters is considered in the paper: release rate, wind speed, wind direction and plume height. And particle swarm optimization is used for searching the optimal parameters. Twin experiment and Kincaid experiment are used to evaluate the performance of the proposed method. The results show that the proposed method can effectively increase the reliability of model prediction and estimate the parameters. It has the advantage of clear concept and simple calculation. It will be useful for improving the result of atmospheric dispersion model at the early stage of nuclear emergency.

Thermal-hydraulic research on rod bundle in the LBE fast reactor with grid spacer

  • Liu, Jie;Song, Ping;Zhang, Dalin;Wang, Shibao;Lin, Chao;Liu, Yapeng;Zhou, Lei;Wang, Chenglong;Tian, Wenxi;Qiu, Suizheng;Su, G.H.
    • Nuclear Engineering and Technology
    • /
    • v.54 no.7
    • /
    • pp.2728-2735
    • /
    • 2022
  • The research on the flow and heat transfer characteristics of lead bismuth(LBE) is significant for the thermal-hydraulic calculation, safety analysis and practical application of lead-based fast reactors(LFR). In this paper, a new CFD model is proposed to solve the thermal-hydraulic analysis of LBE. The model includes two parts: turbulent model and turbulent Prandtl, which are the important factors for LBE. In order to find the best model, the experiment data and design of 19-pin hexagonal rod bundle with spacer grid, undertaken at the Karlsruhe Liquid Metal Laboratory (KALLA) are used for CFD calculation. Furthermore, the turbulent model includes SST k - 𝜔 and k - 𝜀; the turbulent Prandtl includes Cheng-Tak and constant (Prt =1.5,2.0,2.5,3.0). Among them, the combination between SST k - 𝜔 and Cheng-Tak is more suitable for the experiment. But in the low Pe region, the deviation between the experiment data and CFD result is too much. The reason may be the inlet-effect and when Pe is in a low level, the number of molecular thermal diffusion occupies an absolute advantage, and the buoyancy will enhance. In order to test and verify versatility of the model, the NCCL performed by the Nuclear Thermal-hydraulic Laboratory (Nuthel) of Xi'an Jiao tong University is used for CFD to calculate. This paper provides two verification examples for the new universal model.

Assessment of the severe accident code MIDAC based on FROMA, QUENCH-06&16 experiments

  • Wu, Shihao;Zhang, Yapei;Wang, Dong;Tian, Wenxi;Qiu, Suizheng;Su, G.H.
    • Nuclear Engineering and Technology
    • /
    • v.54 no.2
    • /
    • pp.579-588
    • /
    • 2022
  • In order to meet the needs of domestic reactor severe accident analysis program, a MIDAC (Module Invessel Degraded severe accident Analysis Code) is developed and maintained by Xi'an Jiaotong University. As the accuracy of the calculation results of the analysis program is of great significance for the formulation of severe accident mitigation measures, the article select three experiments to evaluate the updated severe accident models of MIDAC. Among them, QUENCH-06 is the international standard No.45, QUENCH-16 is a test for the analysis of air oxidation, and FROMA is an out-of-pile fuel rod melting experiment recently carried out by Xi'an Jiaotong University. The heating and melting model with lumped parameter method and the steam oxidation model with Cathcart-Pawel and Volchek-Zvonarev correlations combination in MIDAC could better meet the needs of severe accident analysis. Although the influence of nitrogen still need to be further improved, the air oxidation model with NUREG still has the ability to provide guiding significance for engineering practice.

Uncertainties impact on the major FOMs for severe accidents in CANDU 6 nuclear power plant

  • R.M. Nistor-Vlad;D. Dupleac;G.L. Pavel
    • Nuclear Engineering and Technology
    • /
    • v.55 no.7
    • /
    • pp.2670-2677
    • /
    • 2023
  • In the nuclear safety studies, a new trend refers to the evaluation of uncertainties as a mandatory component of best-estimate safety analysis which is a modern and technically consistent approach being known as BEPU (Best Estimate Plus Uncertainty). The major objectives of this study consist in performing a study of uncertainties/sensitivities of the major analysis results for a generic CANDU 6 Nuclear Power Plant during Station Blackout (SBO) progression to understand and characterize the sources of uncertainties and their effects on the key figure-of-merits (FOMs) predictions in severe accidents (SA). The FOMs of interest are hydrogen mass generation and event timings such as the first fuel channel failure time, beginning of the core disassembly time, core collapse time and calandria vessel failure time. The outcomes of the study, will allow an improvement of capabilities and expertise to perform uncertainty and sensitivity analysis with severe accident codes for CANDU 6 Nuclear Power Plant.