U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Extremely Low Probability of Rupture pilot study : xLPR framework model user's guide.

Sandia National Laboratories is a multi-program laboratory managed and operated by Sandia Corporation, a wholly owne

Fukushima Daiichi accident study : status as of April 2012.

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Application of the DG-1199 methodology to the ESBWR and ABWR.

Appendix A-5 of Draft Regulatory Guide DG-1199 'Alternative Radiological Source Term for Evaluating Design Basis Accidents at Nuclear Power Reactors' provides guidance - applicable to RADTRAD MSIV leakage models - for scaling containment aerosol concentration to the expected steam dome concentration in order to preserve the simplified use of the Accident Source Term (AST) in assessing containment performance under assumed design basis accident (DBA) conditions. In this study Economic and Safe Boiling Water Reactor (ESBWR) and Advanced Boiling Water Reactor (ABWR) RADTRAD models are developed using the DG-1199, Appendix A-5 guidance. The models were run using RADTRAD v3.03. Low Population Zone (LPZ), control room (CR), and worst-case 2-hr Exclusion Area Boundary (EAB) doses were calculated and compared to the relevant accident dose criteria in 10 CFR 50.67. For the ESBWR, the dose results were all lower than the MSIV leakage doses calculated by General Electric/Hitachi (GEH) in their licensing technical report. There are no comparable ABWR MSIV leakage doses, however, it should be noted that the ABWR doses are lower than the ESBWR doses. In addition, sensitivity cases were evaluated to ascertain the influence/importance of key input parameters/features of the models

Building and Running the Yucca Mountain Total System Performance Model in a Quality Environment

A Total System Performance Assessment (TSPA) model has been developed to support the Safety Analysis Report (SAR) for the Yucca Mountain High-Level Waste Repository. The TSPA model forecasts repository performance over a 20,000-year simulation period. It has a high degree of complexity due to the complexity of its underlying process and abstraction models. This is reflected in the size of the model (a 27,000 element GoldSim file), its use of dynamic-linked libraries (14 DLLs), the number and size of its input files (659 files totaling 4.7 GB), and the number of model input parameters (2541 input database entries). TSPA model development and subsequent simulations with the final version of the model were performed to a set of Quality Assurance (QA) procedures. Due to the complexity of the model, comments on previous TSPAs, and the number of analysts involved (22 analysts in seven cities across four time zones), additional controls for the entire life-cycle of the TSPA model, including management, physical, model change, and input controls were developed and documented. These controls did not replace the QA. procedures, rather they provided guidance for implementing the requirements of the QA procedures with the specific intent of ensuring that the model development process and the simulations performed with the final version of the model had sufficient checking, traceability, and transparency. Management controls were developed to ensure that only management-approved changes were implemented into the TSPA model and that only management-approved model runs were performed. Physical controls were developed to track the use of prototype software and preliminary input files, and to ensure that only qualified software and inputs were used in the final version of the TSPA model. In addition, a system was developed to name, file, and track development versions of the TSPA model as well as simulations performed with the final version of the model

U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Extremely Low Probability of Rupture pilot study : xLPR framework model user's guide.

For the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) Extremely Low Probability of Rupture (xLPR) pilot study, Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) was tasked to develop and evaluate a probabilistic framework using a commercial software package for Version 1.0 of the xLPR Code. Version 1.0 of the xLPR code is focused assessing the probability of rupture due to primary water stress corrosion cracking in dissimilar metal welds in pressurizer surge nozzles. Future versions of this framework will expand the capabilities to other cracking mechanisms, and other piping systems for both pressurized water reactors and boiling water reactors. The goal of the pilot study project is to plan the xLPR framework transition from Version 1.0 to Version 2.0; hence the initial Version 1.0 framework and code development will be used to define the requirements for Version 2.0. The software documented in this report has been developed and tested solely for this purpose. This framework and demonstration problem will be used to evaluate the commercial software's capabilities and applicability for use in creating the final version of the xLPR framework. This report details the design, system requirements, and the steps necessary to use the commercial-code based xLPR framework developed by SNL

Iodine transport analysis in the ESBWR.

A simplified ESBWR MELCOR model was developed to track the transport of iodine released from damaged reactor fuel in a hypothesized core damage accident. To account for the effects of iodine pool chemistry, radiolysis of air and cable insulation, and surface coatings (i.e., paint) the iodine pool model in MELCOR was activated. Modifications were made to MELCOR to add sodium pentaborate as a buffer in the iodine pool chemistry model. An issue of specific interest was whether iodine vapor removed from the drywell vapor space by the PCCS heat exchangers would be sequestered in water pools or if it would be rereleased as vapor back into the drywell. As iodine vapor is not included in the deposition models for diffusiophoresis or thermophoresis in current version of MELCOR, a parametric study was conducted to evaluate the impact of a range of iodine removal coefficients in the PCCS heat exchangers. The study found that higher removal coefficients resulted in a lower mass of iodine vapor in the drywell vapor space

Development, Analysis, and Evaluation of a Commercial Software Framework for the Study of Extremely Low Probability of Rupture (xLPR) Events at Nuclear Power Plants

Sandia National Laboratories is a multi-program laboratory managed and operated by Sandi

Analysis of main steam isolation valve leakage in design basis accidents using MELCOR 1.8.6 and RADTRAD.

Analyses were performed using MELCOR and RADTRAD to investigate main steam isolation valve (MSIV) leakage behavior under design basis accident (DBA) loss-of-coolant (LOCA) conditions that are presumed to have led to a significant core melt accident. Dose to the control room, site boundary and LPZ are examined using both approaches described in current regulatory guidelines as well as analyses based on best estimate source term and system response. At issue is the current practice of using containment airborne aerosol concentrations as a surrogate for the in-vessel aerosol concentration that exists in the near vicinity of the MSIVs. This study finds current practice using the AST-based containment aerosol concentrations for assessing MSIV leakage is non-conservative and conceptually in error. A methodology is proposed that scales the containment aerosol concentration to the expected vessel concentration in order to preserve the simplified use of the AST in assessing containment performance under assumed DBA conditions. This correction is required during the first two hours of the accident while the gap and early in-vessel source terms are present. It is general practice to assume that at {approx}2hrs, recovery actions to reflood the core will have been successful and that further core damage can be avoided. The analyses performed in this study determine that, after two hours, assuming vessel reflooding has taken place, the containment aerosol concentration can then conservatively be used as the effective source to the leaking MSIV's. Recommendations are provided concerning typical aerosol removal coefficients that can be used in the RADTRAD code to predict source attenuation in the steam lines, and on robust methods of predicting MSIV leakage flows based on measured MSIV leakage performance