Light Water Reactor Sustainability Program: Analysis of Pressurized Water Reactor Station Blackout Caused by External Flooding Using the RISMC Toolkit

Technical Report · Fri Aug 01 00:00:00 EDT 2014

DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/1168617· OSTI ID:1168617

Smith, Curtis ^[1]; Mandelli, Diego ^[1]; Prescott, Steven ^[1]; Alfonsi, Andrea ^[1]; Rabiti, Cristian ^[1]; Cogliati, Joshua ^[1]; Kinoshita, Robert ^[1]

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1. Idaho National Lab. (INL), Idaho Falls, ID (United States)

The existing fleet of nuclear power plants is in the process of extending its lifetime and increasing the power generated from these plants via power uprates. In order to evaluate the impact of these factors on the safety of the plant, the Risk Informed Safety Margin Characterization (RISMC) project aims to provide insight to decision makers through a series of simulations of the plant dynamics for different initial conditions (e.g., probabilistic analysis and uncertainty quantification). This report focuses, in particular, on the application of a RISMC detailed demonstration case study for an emergent issue using the RAVEN and RELAP-7 tools. This case study looks at the impact of a couple of challenges to a hypothetical pressurized water reactor, including: (1) a power uprate, (2) a potential loss of off-site power followed by the possible loss of all diesel generators (i.e., a station black-out event), (3) and earthquake induces station-blackout, and (4) a potential earthquake induced tsunami flood. The analysis is performed by using a set of codes: a thermal-hydraulic code (RELAP-7), a flooding simulation tool (NEUTRINO) and a stochastic analysis tool (RAVEN) – these are currently under development at the Idaho National Laboratory.

• Research Organization: Idaho National Lab. (INL), Idaho Falls, ID (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Nuclear Energy (NE)
• DOE Contract Number: AC07-05ID14517
• OSTI ID: 1168617
• Report Number(s): INL/EXT-14-32906; M2LW-14IN0702016; TRN: US1500007
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS
PWR TYPE REACTORS
REACTOR SAFETY
RISK ASSESSMENT
SAFETY MARGINS
NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS
IDAHO NATIONAL LABORATORY
THERMAL HYDRAULICS
MONTE CARLO METHOD
PROBABILISTIC ESTIMATION
N CODES
R CODES
OUTAGES
EARTHQUAKES
TSUNAMIS
FLOODS
SUSTAINABILITY
STOCHASTIC PROCESSES
REACTOR ACCIDENTS
AUGMENTATION
LIFETIME EXTENSION
MANAGEMENT
PERFORMANCE
PROFITS
COMPUTERIZED SIMULATION
BWR
SBO
flooding
limit surface
PRA
dynamic PRA