Safety Analyses of the Lead-Bismuth Eutectic Cooled Accelerator Driven System XT-ADS

Abstract

Safety analyses for the XT-ADS were performed with the reactor safety code SIMMER-III. Besides a brief description of the numerical model, three typical transients are presented in this paper, namely, the unprotected loss of flow (ULOF), unprotected transient over-current (UTOC), and the unprotected coolant flow blockage accident (UBA). Because of the important phenomenon of mass flow rate undershooting in the ULOF case, an integral equation model was set up for a further theoretical study of ULOF. The model confirms the numerical simulation results for various cases and gives a deeper understanding of this phenomenon. The faster the pump shut down, the larger is the undershooting of the mass flow rate. On the other hand a larger coolant cold leg area leads to a weaker undershooting. The stability analysis shows that the natural convection state is in the region of the damped oscillation for the current XT-ADS design.