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U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Loss-of-feedwater transients in PWRs

Conference ·
OSTI ID:6930561
Recent severe accident sequence analysis (SASA) work in LASL's Multifault Accident Analysis Section has focused on loss-of-feedwater (LOFW) transients at a 4-loop Westinghouse nuclear power reactor. In all transients studied, the initiator was loss of main feedwater and reactor coolant pump (RCP) trip, caused by temporary loss of off-site power. Subsequent automatic actions included reactor scram, closure of the main steam isolation valves, and initiation of auxiliary feedwater (AFW) flow. TRAC-PD2 calculations were designed to study the consequences of AFW delivery rates below the minimum specified in the emergency operating procedures (EOPs) for the reference 4-loop plant. Six types of LOFW scenarios have been studied, including (1) zero AFW availability (nominal case), (2) initially zero AFW but full recovery after 2 h, (3) zero AFW with steam generator (SG) atmospheric relief valve (ARV) malfunction, (4) zero AFW with high pressure charging flow initiated after 2 h, and (5) zero AFW with delay in reactor scram. Additional cases were considered to study the effects of uncertainties in pressurizer heater/spray operation, operator manual initiation of high pressure charging flow, reactor initial conditions, and RCP and power coastdown characteristics. Nominal case results, rationale for selections of other cases, and lessons learned are summarized.
Research Organization:
Los Alamos Scientific Lab., NM (USA)
DOE Contract Number:
W-7405-ENG-36
OSTI ID:
6930561
Report Number(s):
LA-UR-80-2811; CONF-801053-6
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English