Containment depressurization capabilities of filtered venting system in 1000 MWe PWR with large dry containment

Abstract

After the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant accident, the Korean government and nuclear industries performed comprehensive safety inspections on all domestic nuclear power plants against beyond design bases events. As a result, a total of 50 recommendations were defined as safety improvement action items. One of them is installation of a containment filtered venting system (CFVS) or portable backup containment spray system. In this paper, the applicability of CFVS is examined for OPR1000, a 1000 MWe PWR with large dry containment in Korea. Thermohydraulic analysis results show that a filtered discharge flow rate of 15 [kg/s] at 0.9 [MPa] is sufficient to depressurize the containment against representative containment overpressurization scenarios. Radiological release to the environment is reduced to 10-3 considering the decontamination factor. Also, this cyclic venting strategy reduces noble gas release by 50% for 7 days. The probability of maintaining the containment integrity in level 2 probabilistic safety assessment (PSA) initiating events is improved twofold, from 43% to 87%. So, the CFVS can further improve the containment integrity in severe accident conditions. © 2014 Sang-Won Lee et al.