Contribution to the development of passive safety systems for advanced light water reactors

• Autores: Lluís Batet
• Directores de la Tesis: Francesc-Josep Reventós Puigjaner (dir. tes.)
• Lectura: En la Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) ( España ) en 2004
• Idioma: español
• Tribunal Calificador de la Tesis: Xavier Ortega Aramburu (presid.), Mª del Carmen Pretel Sánchez (secret.), J.L. Muñóz Cobo (voc.), Sergio Chiva Vicent (voc.), Francisco Javier González Matesanz (voc.)
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• Resumen

  • Forecasted primary energy consumption at the middle of XXI century will double or triple the present rate. Despite of the appeals for its reduction, annual emission of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere will continue rising.

    Electricity will cover an increasing part of the final energy demand. It seems plausible that nuclear power will continue playing an important role in the world energy supply.

    Nuclear power plants of new generation are designed adopting new safety approaches. Special consideration is deserved by those designs incorporating passive safety systems, which make use of natural forces (gravity, convection, etc.) to perform their function.

    This Ph.D. Thesis was originally conceived as a contribution to the development of passive safety systems. The cooperation established between the Technical University of Catalonia (UPC) and General Electric in the compass of the ESBWR project should have made it possible.

    Soon it was realized that the analytical tools used by the thermal-hydraulics community were not completely suitable to simulate accidental scenarios such as those anticipated for the passive type Advanced Light Water Reactors (ALWRs). During the late few years, the international community is working to establish the capabilities of the existing codes in relation to this concern. This Ph.D. Thesis aims to be a contribution in this direction.

    The main objective of this work is to demonstrate that, despite of their limitations, thermal-hydraulic system codes like RELAP5 are able to simulate, in a comprehensive approach, the behavior of an ALWR plant with passive safety features in accidental conditions, i.e. involving complex phenomena in the containment (mixing-stratification of vapor and noncondensable -NC- gases, venting into the suppression pool), in the passive safety systems (condensation in presence of NC gases) and even in the reactor vessel (discharge of a gravity driven cooling system).

    To accomplish this