Developing Fully Coupled Dynamical Reactor Core Isolation System Models in RELAP-7 for Extended Station Black-Out Analysis

Abstract

The reactor core isolation cooling (RCIC) system in a boiling water reactor (BWR) provides makeup water to the reactor vessel for core cooling when the main steam lines are isolated and the normal supply of water to the reactor vessel is lost. It was one of the very few safety systems still available during the Fukushima Daiichi accidents after the tsunamis hit the plants and the system successfully delayed the core meltdown for a few days for unit 2 & 3. Therefore, detailed models for RCIC system components are indispensable to understand extended station black-out accidents (SBO) for BWRs. As part of the effort to develop the new generation reactor system safety analysis code RELAP-7, major components to simulate the RCIC system have been developed. This paper describes the models for those components such as turbine, pump, and wet well. Selected individual component test simulations and a simplified SBO simulation up to but before core damage is presented. The successful implementation of the simplified RCIC and wet well models paves the way to further improve the models for safety analysis by including more detailed physical processes in the near future.