Lower head creep rupture failure analysis associated with alternative accident sequences of the Three Mile Island Unit 2
- Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich and Swiss Federal Nuclear Safety Inspectorate, Zurich, Switzerland, 8001 (Switzerland)
The objective of this lower head creep rupture analysis is to assess the current version of MELCOR 1.8.5-RG against SCDAP/RELAP5 MOD 3.3kz. The purpose of this assessment is to investigate the current MELCOR in-vessel core damage progression phenomena including the model for the formation of a molten pool. The model for stratified molten pool natural heat transfer will be included in the next MELCOR release. Presently, MELCOR excludes the gap heat-transfer model for the cooling associated with the narrow gap between the debris and the lower head vessel wall. All these phenomenological models are already treated in SCDAP/RELAP5 using the COUPLE code to model the heat transfer of the relocated debris with the lower head based on a two-dimensional finite-element-method. The assessment should determine if current MELCOR capabilities adequately cover core degradation phenomena appropriate for the consolidated MELCOR code. Inclusion of these features should bring MELCOR much closer to a state of parity with SCDAP/RELAP5 and is a currently underway element in the MELCOR code consolidation effort. This assessment deals with the following analysis of the Three Mile Island Unit 2 (TMI-2) alternative accident sequences. The TMI-2 alternative accident sequence-1 includes the continuation of the base case of the TMI-2 accident with the Reactor Coolant Pumps (RCP) tripped, and the High Pressure Injection System (HPIS) throttled after approximately 6000 s accident time, while in the TMI-2 alternative accident sequence-2, the reactor coolant pumps is tripped after 6000 s and the HPIS is activated after 12,012 s. The lower head temperature distributions calculated with SCDAP/RELAP5 are visualized and animated with open source visualization freeware 'OpenDX'. (author)
- Research Organization:
- American Nuclear Society, 555 North Kensington Avenue, La Grange Park, IL 60526 (United States)
- OSTI ID:
- 21160551
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: ICAPP'04: 2004 international congress on advances in nuclear power plants, Pittsburgh, PA (United States), 13-17 Jun 2004; Other Information: Country of input: France; 14 refs; Related Information: In: Proceedings of the 2004 international congress on advances in nuclear power plants - ICAPP'04, 2338 pages.
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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