Reliability Assessment of 2400 MWth Gas-Cooled Fast Reactor Natural Circulation Decay Heat Removal in Pressurized Situations

Abstract

As the 2400 MWth gas-cooled fast reactor concept makes use of passive safety features in combination with active safety systems, the question of natural circulation decay heat removal (NCDHR) reliability and performance assessment into the ongoing probabilistic safety assessment in support to the reactor design, named “probabilistic engineering assessment” (PEA), constitutes a challenge. Within the 5th Framework Program for Research and Development (FPRD) of the European Community, a methodology has been developed to evaluate the reliability of passive systems characterized by a moving fluid and whose operation is based on physical principles, such as the natural circulation. This reliability method for passive systems (RMPSs) is based on uncertainties propagation into thermal-hydraulic (T-H) calculations. The aim of this exercise is finally to determine the performance reliability of the DHR system operating in a “passive” mode, taking into account the uncertainties of parameters retained for thermal-hydraulical calculations performed with the CATHARE 2 code. According to the PEA preliminary results, exhibiting the weight of pressurized scenarios (i.e., with intact primary circuit boundary) for the core damage frequency (CDF), the RMPS exercise is first focusing on the NCDHR performance at these T-H conditions.