Effects of Liner Degradation on the Severe Accident Consequences at a PWR Plant with a Reinforced Concrete Containment

摘要

Since degradation has been observed in the containment vessels of a number of operating nuclear power plants in the United States, a number of studies have examined the increase in the risk of a fission product release in the unlikely event of a severe accident. Here,, deterministic analyses were performed in the current study to assess the effects of degradation on the consequences. These analyses were performed using the Sandia codes MELCOR and MACCS. These codes were used to simulate two different accident scenarios (long- and short-term station black-outs) and compute the resulting consequences for a pressurized water reactor plant with a reinforced concrete containment. The structural analyses were used to develop the containment behavior models for the accident simulations. Several different postulated cases of liner corrosion were considered to enable a comparison of the consequence.