HTGR Knowledge Base

Conference Article: Scenarios of hypothetical water and air ingress in small modular HTGRs

Scherer, W.; Gerwin, H. (Forschungszentrum Juelich GmbH (Germany))

Abstract

The ingress of larger amounts of water, steam or air into the primary circuit of a high temperature reactor is seen to be an accident of considerable safety relevance. The overall destructive potential of these effects depends strongly on the quantities of the invading material as well as on the physical and operational boundary conditions of the reactor system at the time of the ingress. The safety analysis of water and air ingress accidents therefore is based on scenarios depending on the plant's conditions and considering different levels of protection systems failures. With respect to a catastrophe-free nuclear technology scenarios in the hypothetical area without any protection system action are of special interest. Starting from the knowledge on design basis accident behaviour of the German modular HTR this paper discusses some scenarios in the hypothetic accident field that should be analyzed in detail to find the limitations of the inherent safety features of this type of reactor. For some cases preliminary answers on the basis of less sophisticated computer models are given and suggestions for further developments and improvements of the reactor design are formulated.

view the full text of this article (7 pages, format: PDF, size= 880kB)

key words: Gas Cooled Reactor, Nuclear Technology
Reference:
Technical committee meeting on response of fuel, fuel elements and gas cooled reactor cores under accidental air or water ingress conditions. Beijing (China). 25-27 Oct 1993
International Atomic Energy Agency, Vienna (Austria)
IAEA-TECDOC--784, pp:79-85