Using an IIST 1% Cold-Leg SBLOCA Experiment with Passive Safety Injection to Assess the RELAP5/MOD3.2 Code

Abstract

The thermal-hydraulic behavior of a postulated 1% cold-leg break loss-of-coolant accident (LOCA) in a pressurized water reactor system was investigated experimentally by the three-loop Institute of Nuclear Energy Research (INER) Integral System Test (IIST) facility with the passive core cooling system (PCCS) and numerically by the RELAP5/MOD3.2 computer code. The PCCS of the IIST facility includes three core makeup tanks (CMTs), three accumulators, and a four-stage automatic depressurization system. The aim of this research is to study the performance of the CMTs with the actuation of the ADS during a small-break LOCA. The experimental results show that the IIST PCCS has the capability to maintain long-term cooling under a postulated 1% cold-leg break LOCA. The comparison of the RELAP5/MOD3.2 simulation against the experimental data shows good agreement in major thermal-hydraulic phenomena in the reactor coolant system, but the prediction of the asymmetric behavior for the three CMTs during a gravity drain period is inadequate.