Accident management for indian pressurized heavy water reactors
- Directorate of Safety, Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited Nabhikiya Urja Bhawan, Anushakti Nagar, Mumbai-400 094 (India)
Indian nuclear power program as of now is mainly based on Pressurized Heavy Water Reactors (PHWRs). Operating Procedures for normal power operation and Emergency Operating Procedures for operational transients and accidents within design basis exist for all Indian PHWRs. In addition, on-site and off-site emergency response procedures are also available for these NPPs. The guidelines needed for severe accidents mitigation are now formally being documented for Indian PHWRs. Also, in line with International trend of having symptom based emergency handling, the work is in advanced stage for preparation of symptom-based emergency operating procedures. Following a plant upset condition; a number of alarms distributed in different information systems appear in the control room to aid operator to identify the nature of the event. After identifying the event, appropriate intervention in the form of event based emergency operating procedure is put into use by the operating staff. However, if the initiating event cannot be unambiguously identified or after the initial event some other failures take place, then the selected event based emergency operating procedure will not be optimal. In such a case, reactor safety is ensured by monitoring safety functions (depicted by selected plant parameters grouped together) throughout the event handling so that the barriers to radioactivity release namely, fuel and fuel cladding, primary heat transport system integrity and containment remain intact. Simultaneous monitoring of all these safety functions is proposed through status trees and this concept will be implemented through a computer-based system. For beyond design basis accidents, event sequences are identified which may lead to severe core damage. As part of this project, severe accident mitigation guidelines are being finalized for the selected event sequences. The paper brings out the details of work being carried out for Indian PHWRs for symptom based event handling and severe accident management. (authors)
- Research Organization:
- American Nuclear Society, 555 North Kensington Avenue, La Grange Park, IL 60526 (United States)
- OSTI ID:
- 21021191
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: 2006 International congress on advances in nuclear power plants - ICAPP'06, Reno - Nevada (United States), 4-8 Jun 2006; Other Information: Country of input: France; 2 refs; Related Information: In: Proceedings of the 2006 international congress on advances in nuclear power plants - ICAPP'06, 2734 pages.
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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