Current status of MELCOR 2.2 for fusion safety analyses

Mascari, Fulvio; Bersano, Andrea; Adorni, M.; D’Ovidio, Gino; Martín-Fuertes, F.; Jin, Xue Zhou; Mazzini, Guido; Bruno, Giordano; Georgiev, G.; Leskovar, Matjaž; Bertani, Cristina; Testoni, Raffaella; Giannetti, Fabio; D’Onorio, Matteo; Agnello, G.; Maio, P.A. Di; Angelucci, M.; Paci, Sandro; Grippo, G; Fernández-Cosials, Kevin; Dongiovanni, Danilo Nicola; Malicki, Mikołaj

doi:10.1016/j.fusengdes.2023.113869

Cited by 3 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 32 publications

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“…-a common MELCOR version valid for both fission and fusion safety analyses is recommended to be developed, as it is illustrated in [19]. -Tritium functionalities of UFOTRI are being integrated in the decision support system JRODOS [28] as an ongoing WPSAE task.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Preliminary accident analysis of the loss of vacuum in vacuum vessel for the European DEMO HCPB blanket concept

Jin,

Raskob

2024

Nucl. Fusion

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Design Basis Accidents (DBAs) are investigated continuously for the European DEMO reactor accompanying its development. One selected postulated initial event (PIE) is a loss of vacuum (LOVA) in vacuum vessel (VV) with large ingress of air induced by rupture in a VV penetration. It has been investigated for the helium cooled pebble bed blanket concept according to the DEMO baseline 2017. The associated primary heat transfer system (PHTS) and the related systems in the tokamak building, from the VV to the PHTS vault and galleries, are considered for the investigation. The LOVA is postulated to occur at a port seal of the EC (Electron Cyclotron) equatorial port plug (EPP) on the side of the closure plate with (i) a small leak of 1.0E-3 m², or (ii) a large break size of 1.0E-2 m². Air ingress from one port cell into the VV leads to the VV pressurization and the fusion power termination followed by an unmitigated plasma disruption. A loss of off-site power (LOOP) for 32 h is assumed to coincide with the disruption. An in-vessel LOCA (Loss of Coolant Accident) is considered as a consequence if the affected first wall reaches the defined temperature of 1000 °C. The radioactive inventories in the VV (tritium, W-dust) can mobilize towards the VVPSS, the affected systems in the building and the environment due to pressurization, venting and leak conditions. MELCOR 1.8.6 for fusion is applied for this deterministic safety analysis. The resulting releases of radioactivity to the environment are then provided for dose calculation using the computer systems UFOTRI and COSYMA. The transient results of the accident sequences, the detected hydrogen production, the source terms releases and the dose results will be discussed.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…MELCOR 2.2 is the current fission release. However, it does not include some physical models required for fusion safety analyses [19]. For special fusion application, MELCOR 1.8.6 for fusion [20,21] is selected for the deterministic safety analyses of the blanket concepts within the WPSAE.…”

Section: System Modeling Using Melcormentioning

confidence: 99%

Preliminary accident analysis of the loss of vacuum in vacuum vessel for the European DEMO HCPB blanket concept

Jin,

Raskob

2024

Nucl. Fusion

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“…The cross section of the reaction is determined by the particles' energy or speed. The averaging process yields a function for a given reaction that depends only on the temperature and can be denoted 𝑓(𝑇) [7].…”

Section: The Plasma Statesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Development and application of nuclear fusion

Ruomu

2023

TNS

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Energy is always a vital part of most of those scientific areas. Researchers are always trying to understand energetic production and take those principles into social usage. Fortunately, nuclear reactions can fix those previous questions. This paper provides characteristics and specific advantages of nuclear power generation from related literature and can give effective conclusions from those specific aspects on particular social situations. The effective use scenario of this specific power generation method can be summarized from the analysis results of the fusion reactor principle and can improve the reliability when it is actually put into use can be improved. From the data research and literature research in this paper, nuclear fusion has a huge potential in power generation and has involved much simpler method and devices. Compared with standard fission reaction and thermal power generation, the method and equipment involved in nuclear fusion are much simpler. Nuclear fusion has many advantages on radiation and application aspects, and can involve many feasible future extension research directions.

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Development of a MELCOR Model for LVR-15 Severe Accidents Assessment

Flores y Flores,

Mazzini,

Dambrosio

2024

Energies

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LVR-15 is a light-water-tank-type research reactor placed in a stainless-steel vessel under a shielding cover located in the Research Centre Rez (CVR) near Prague. It is operated at a steady-state power of up to 10 MWt under atmospheric pressure and is cooled by forced circulation. In 2011, the fuel was replaced, going from high-enriched uranium (HEU) to low-enriched uranium (LEU). After 2017, the State Office for Nuclear Safety (SUJB) asked CVR to evaluate the LVR-15 under Design Extended Conditions B (DEC-B). For this reason, a new model was developed in the MELCOR code, which allows for modelling the progression of a severe accident (SA) in light-water nuclear power plants and estimating the behaviour of the reactor under SA conditions. The model was built by collecting information about the LVR-15. Since the research reactor can have different core configurations according to the location of the core components, the core configuration with the most fuel (hottest campaign K221) was selected. Then, to create the radial nodalisation, the details of the core components were obtained and grouped in five radial rings and 27 axial levels. The simulation was run with the boundary conditions collected from campaign K221, and the results were compared with the reference values of the campaign with a negligible percentage of error. For the coolant inlet and outlet temperature, the reference values were 318.18 K and 323.5 K, respectively, while for the simulation, the steady state reached 319 K for the inlet temperature and 324 K for the outlet temperature. Additionally, the cladding temperature of the hottest assembly was compared with the reference value (353.72 K) and the steady-state simulation results (362 K). In future work, different transients leading to severe accidents will be simulated. When simulating the LVR-15 reactor with MELCOR, specific attention is required for the aluminium-cladded fuel assemblies, as the model requires some assumptions to cope with the phenomenological limitations.

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Current status of MELCOR 2.2 for fusion safety analyses

Cited by 3 publications

References 32 publications

Preliminary accident analysis of the loss of vacuum in vacuum vessel for the European DEMO HCPB blanket concept

Preliminary accident analysis of the loss of vacuum in vacuum vessel for the European DEMO HCPB blanket concept

Development and application of nuclear fusion

Development of a MELCOR Model for LVR-15 Severe Accidents Assessment

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