• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.51 no.6
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• pp.1669-1680
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• 2019

Seismic safety is considered to be one of the key design objectives of AP1000 nuclear power plant (NPP) in strong earthquakes. Dynamic behavior, damage development and aggravation effect are studied in this study for the three main components of AP1000 NPP, namely reinforced concrete shield building (RCSB), steel vessel containment (SVC) and reinforced concrete auxiliary building (RCAB). Characteristics including nonlinear concrete tension and compressive constitutions with plastic damage are employed to establish the numerical model, which is further validated by existing studies. The author investigates three earthquakes and eight input levels with the maximum magnitude of 2.4 g and the results show that the concrete material of both RCSB and RCAB have suffered serious damage in intense earthquakes. Considering RCAB in the whole NPP, significant damage aggravation effect can be detected, which is mainly concentrated at the upper intersection between RCSB and RCAB. SVC and reinforcing bar demonstrate excellent seismic performance with no obvious damage.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.48 no.1
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• pp.236-245
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• 2016

In a reactor coolant system of a nuclear power plant (NPP), an overpressure protection system keeps pressure in the loop within 110% of design pressure. However if the system does not work properly, pressure in the loop could elevate hugely in a short time. It would be seriously disastrous if a weak point in the pressure boundary component bursts and releases radioactive material within the containment; and it may lead to a leak outside the containment. In this study, a gross deformation that leads to a burst of pressure boundary components was investigated. Major components in the primary pressure boundary that is structurally important were selected based on structural mechanics, then, they were used to study the burst pressure of components by finite element method (FEM) analysis and by number of closed forms of theoretical relations. The burst pressure was also used as a metric of design optimization. It revealed which component was the weakest and which component had the highest margin to bursting failure. This information is valuable in severe accident progression prediction. The burst pressures of APR-1400, AP1000 and VVER-1000 reactor coolant systems were evaluated and compared to give relative margins of safety.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.53 no.5
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• pp.1686-1704
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• 2021

This study addresses the numerical simulation of the shield building of an AP1000 nuclear power plant (NPP) subjected to a large commercial aircraft impact. First, a simplified finite element model (F.E. model) of the large commercial Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircraft is established. The F.E. model of the AP1000 shield building is constructed, which is a reasonably simplified reinforced concrete structure. The effectiveness of both F.E. models is verified by the classical Riera method and the impact test of a 1/7.5 scaled GE-J79 engine model. Then, based on the verified F.E. models, the entire impact process of the aircraft on the shield building is simulated by the missile-target interaction method (coupled method) and by the ANSYS/LS-DYNA software, which is at different initial impact velocities and impact heights. Finally, the laws and characteristics of the aircraft impact force, residual velocity, kinetic energy, concrete damage, axial reinforcement stress, and perforated size are analyzed in detail. The results show that all of them increase with the addition to the initial impact velocity. The first four are not very sensitive to the impact height. The engine impact mainly contributes to the peak impact force, and the peak impact force is six times higher than that in the first stage. With increasing initial impact velocity, the maximum aircraft impact force rises linearly. The range of the tension and pressure of the reinforcement axial stress changes with the impact height. The perforated size increases with increasing impact height. The radial perforation area is almost insensitive to the initial impact velocity and impact height. The research of this study can provide help for engineers in designing AP1000 shield buildings.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.53 no.8
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• pp.2534-2546
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• 2021

Nuclear emergency preparedness and response is an essential part to ensure the safety of nuclear power plant (NPP). Key support technologies of nuclear emergency decision-making usually consist of accident diagnosis, source term estimation, accident consequence assessment, and protective action recommendation. Source term estimation is almost the most difficult part among them. For example, bad communication, incomplete information, as well as complicated accident scenario make it hard to determine the reactor status and estimate the source term timely in the Fukushima accident. Subsequently, it leads to the hard decision on how to take appropriate emergency response actions. Hence, this paper aims to develop a method for rapid source term estimation to support nuclear emergency decision making in pressurized water reactor NPP. The method aims to make our knowledge on NPP provide better support nuclear emergency. Firstly, this paper studies how to build a Bayesian network model for the NPP based on professional knowledge and engineering knowledge. This paper presents a method transforming the PRA model (event trees and fault trees) into a corresponding Bayesian network model. To solve the problem that some physical phenomena which are modeled as pivotal events in level 2 PRA, cannot find sensors associated directly with their occurrence, a weighted assignment approach based on expert assessment is proposed in this paper. Secondly, the monitoring data of NPP are provided to the Bayesian network model, the real-time status of pivotal events and initiating events can be determined based on the junction tree algorithm. Thirdly, since PRA knowledge can link the accident sequences to the possible release categories, the proposed method is capable to find the most likely release category for the candidate accidents scenarios, namely the source term. The probabilities of possible accident sequences and the source term are calculated. Finally, the prototype software is checked against several sets of accident scenario data which are generated by the simulator of AP1000-NPP, including large loss of coolant accident, loss of main feedwater, main steam line break, and steam generator tube rupture. The results show that the proposed method for rapid source term estimation under nuclear emergency decision making is promising.