gothic code evaluation of alternative passive containment cooling features Original Research Article

Reliance on passive cooling has become an important objective in containment design. Several reactor concepts have been set forth, which are equipped with entirely passively cooled containments. However, the problems that have to be overcome in rejecting the entire heat generated by a severe accident in a high-rating reactor (i.e. one with a rating greater than 1200 MWe) have been found to be substantial and without obvious solutions. The GOTHIC code was verified and modified for containment cooling applications; optimal mesh sizes, computational time steps and applicable heat transfer correlations were examined. The effect of the break location on circulation patterns that develop inside the containment was also evaluated. The GOTHIC code was then employed to assess the effectiveness of several original heat rejection features that make it possible to cool high-rating containments. Two containment concepts were evaluated: one for a 1200 MWe new pressure tube light-water reactor, and one for a 1300 MWe pressurized-water reactor. The effectiveness of various containment configurations that include specific pressure-limiting features has been predicted. The best-performance configurations-worst-case-accident scenarios that were examined yielded peak pressures of less than 0.30 MPa for the 1200 MWe pressure tube light-water reactor, and less than 0.45 MPa for the 1300 MWe pressurized-water reactor.