An evaluation model to predict steam concentration in a BWR reactor building

Abstract

When there is no power for cooling the spent fuel pool and conditioning the air in a boiling water reactor (BWR) reactor building, water vapor is generated from the pool and it affects the atmosphere in the building. To consider the impact of the steam in preparing emergency operation procedures, the building atmosphere under various conditions is to be evaluated with reasonably low computational cost. A lumped parameter model to predict the transient behavior of the building atmosphere was developed, in which the evaporation from the spent fuel pool and the condensation to the wall were taken into consideration. A transient behavior of temperature and vapor concentration in a BWR operating floor was predicted with the model. The results and the prediction speed were compared to those of a three-dimensional computational fluid dynamic calculation, and it was confirmed that the model could obtain almost the same results about 280,000 times faster. Parameter studies are conducted with the model, and dominant parameters to the evaporation and the condensation were clarified.