Analysis of initial Power Burst Facility severe fuel damage tests using MELCOR

Conference · Sun Jan 01 04:00:00 EST 1989 · Transactions of the American Nuclear Society; (USA)

OSTI ID:6768721

Madni, I K ^[1]

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1. Brookhaven National Lab., Upton, NY (USA)

MELCOR is a fully integrated code that models the progression of severe accidents in light water reactors. It is being developed for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) be Sandia National Laboratory and is designed to provide improved source term assessment capability in comparison with the currently used Source Term Code Package (STCP). Although the development work is ongoing, MELCOR can be used to analyze a variety of problems in both pressurized water reactors and boiling water reactors. Most of the validation efforts for MELCOR thus far have focused on experiments that involve ex-vessel phenomena. An area of major uncertainty in severe-accident assessment, and an area in which the current validation effort for MELCOR is weakest, relates to in-vessel phenomena. In particular, the heat-up, melting, relocation, and oxidation models in MELCOR need to be assessed. This would best be accomplished by comparing MELCOR calculated results of melt progression for an experiment to those of a more mechanistic code and STCP. The purpose of this paper is to describe a MELCOR simulation of the POWER BURST Facility (PBF) Severe Fuel Damage (SFD) Scoping and 1-1 Tests and to compare results with predictions from STCP and NRC's mechanistic code SCDAP.

• OSTI ID: 6768721
• Report Number(s): CONF-890604--
• Conference Information: Journal Name: Transactions of the American Nuclear Society; (USA) Journal Volume: 59
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

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