Resumen de Functional Reliability Quantification of CAREM-like Passive Isolation Condenser with RMPS+
Strong reliance on passive safety design options has become a ‘trademark’ of many advanced reactor designs (IAEA, 2005), including several evolutionary designs and the majority of innovative small and medium sized reactor. Passive safety systems require verifications and testing to demonstrate and prove their reliable operation and, if necessary, adjust their design accordingly. While individual processes may be well understood, the combinations of these processes, which determine the actual performance of passive safety systems, may vary depending on changes in initial and boundary conditions and failure or malfunctioning of components. In this context, arises the need to develop methods for reliability assessment of passive safety system performance. Such methods would facilitate the application of risk-informed approaches in design optimization and safety assessment of advanced reactors, contributing to enhance safety and improve economics.
Different methods have been developed; in particular it was of our interest the use RMPS methodology (Marquès et al., 2005) to evaluate the performance of CAREM-like reactor PSS. CAREM-like is an hypothetical reactor that approximates the design characteristics of CAREM prototype (geometric values, systems layout, etc.) and is used to setup a model to develop the present task. It is an accurate model for PSS evaluation purposes and for testing the methodology used.
A representative case is presented, where the role of IC to cope with a SBO is analyzed in terms of fulfilling a design goal RMPS is used, and the FR is quantified. The overall process methodology can be seen in Figure 1, where uncertainties are propagated trough a best-estimate (B-E) model to quantify the FR.
