AN EVALUATION OF THE APPLICABILITY OF EXISTING DATA TO THE ANALYTICAL DESCRIPTION OF A NUCLEAR-REACTOR ACCIDENT Quarterly Progress Report for July through September, 1970

摘要

This study is restricted to pressurized-water and boiling-water reactors, in which the maximum credible accident is considered to be a loss-of-coolant or "blowdown" situation. In this low-probability event, the integrity of the primary coolant system is breached by some mechanism and the system is opened to the atmosphere. The size of the opening can be postulated to range from the size of a control-rod housing to a catastrophic failure of the pressure vessel, but the most commonly considered accident for design purposes is the double-ended failure of one of the main coolant pipes in the primary system. When the failure occurs, the primary coolant, which is at an elevated temperature and pressure, undergoes a rapid depressurization, and most of the water is expelled from the primary system.nThe objectives of the emergency-core-cooling support subtask are to (1) assist the USAEC and the power-reactor industry in obtaining the maximum amount of information from the various emergency-core-cooling experimental programs;(2) develop analytical means to apply experimental data to power -reactor safety analyses;and (3) assist the USAEC in the planning.