Experimental validation on the operational and cooling performance of the passive safety system with Atlas
After the Fukushima accident, passive safety systems are considered as the most promising alternatives to reinforce the safety and reliability of an ultimate heat removal system without any operator actions. In Korea, a passive auxiliary feedwater system (PAFS) was developed and adopted to a GEN-III+ nuclear power plant, APR+ to completely replace the conventional auxiliary feedwater system. The integral effect tests were performed to validate the cooling and operational performance of PAFS, coupled with the reactor coolant systems using the ATLAS facility. The representative design basis accidents (DBAs) such as a feedwater line break, a steam line break, and a steam generator tube rupture transients were experimentally simulated in this study. In addition, an integral effect test was performed for simulating a station blackout transient as a limiting beyond DBA. From the integral effect test results, it could be concluded that the APR+ has the capability of coping with the hypothetical DBA and bDBA by adopting PAFS and proper set-points of its operation. (authors)