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chamber of the PCV. This pool can temporarily absorb the decay heat from the reactor core even when the reactor needs to be isolated. This pool can also absorb the released energy from the reactor coolant system in a LOCA due to the primary coolant system break and provide water long-term to the ECCS.

  1. Philosophy to prevent occurrence of serious incidents

Serious incidents may harm the health and safety of the public and of the plant personnel. Examples are a LOCA, due to a pipe break at the reactor coolant pressure boundary, any accident releasing radioactive materials, due to a pipe break of the process systems, such as the MS lines, outside the PCV. It is important to lower the occurrence frequencies of such serious incidents to a minimum.

To this end, the following design precautions are taken.

  1. The reactor core has inherent rapid negative reactivity feed back properties over its operating ranges. Thus, any inadvertent rapid reactivity insertion is automatically compensated by the negative reactivity, and no reactivity excursion accidents can occur in principle.

  2. The reactor coolant pressure boundaries are kept intact against any abnormal transients during operation, and the nuclear and thermal properties of the reactor core are kept within the allowable limit values.

Thus, even if a main system or component fails during operation, fuel rods are not damaged immediately and radioactive materials are not released from the reactor. The abnormal transients are brought under control quickly and do not last over a long period.

  1. Materials for the reactor coolant pressure boundary are selected to avoid an occurrence of stress corrosion cracking (SCC). The reactor coolant pressure boundary has sufficient strengths against the pre-assumed loads.

The integrity of the reactor coolant pressure boundary can be checked by periodical in­service inspections as needed.

  1. Even if a small leak occurs across a reactor coolant pressure boundary, the leak detection system detects the leakage immediately and

reliably so that the incident can be controlled before it leads to serious conditions.

  1. Philosophy to detect occurrence of serious incidents and safe shutdown of the reactor Occurrence frequencies of serious incidents can be regarded as very low and practically negligible, owing to the aforementioned measures. However, the following design precautions are taken, assuming an occurrence from the viewpoint of safe plant design, so that the occurrence can be promptly and reliably detected, and the reactor can be led to a safe shutdown.

  1. A safety protection system is installed for immediate detection of the occurrence of any serious incidents, and for automatic actuation of the reactor shutdown system and the ESFs. The occurrence is detected by noting the changes of parameters accompanying an incident such as a rapid increase of neutron flux in the core, a decrease of the reactor water level or pressure, and an increase of the PCV pressure.

  2. The safety protection system has redundancy and independency so that its functions are not lost even when a single failure or an out- of-service of a component or a channel of the system is assumed. Even under unfavorable conditions like a loss of power or a line disconnection, the safety protection system reaches safe conditions eventually and maintains its functions.

  3. Functions of the safety protection system are essentially testable during operation.

Owing to the safety protection system, the occurrences of serious incidents can be reliably detected and their development can be immediately controlled.

  1. Philosophy to mitigate serious incidents

Occurrence frequencies of serious incidents are kept very low by the aforementioned countermeasures. But, from the viewpoint of safe plant design, serious incidents are assumed to occur and several ESFs are provided to mitigate the consequences to an acceptable level.

For example, the following ESFs are designed to work and manage the accident conditions for mitigation in a LOCA, the severest accident

NSRA, Japan

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