WGAMA/WGFS Status Report on Spent Fuel Pool (SFP) under loss of cooling accident conditions

Abstract of a technical presentation presented at:
WGAMA/WGFS Status Report on Spent Fuel Pool (SFP).
Task Group's 2nd writers meeting
Paris, France
October 24–25, 2013

Prepared by:
Wade Grant
Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

Abstract

The Working Group on Analysis and Management of Accidents (WGAMA) and Working Group on Fuel Safety (WGFS) under the Committee on the Safety of Nuclear Installations (CSNI) have requested the drafting of a Status Report on Spent Fuel Pool (SFP) under loss of cooling accident conditions. The SFP Status Report briefly covers the phenomenology involved in loss of cooling accident of wet storage facility and the associated mitigation strategies. All aspects of a loss of cooling accident in the spent fuel pool are identified, such as the behaviour of the pool, racks and fuel assemblies, the accident progression under partial or complete loss of cooling accident, the hydrogen risk, the fission product release, the criticality risk, etc. An improved understanding is expected to emerge through the SFP Status Report which will be used not only for more reliable SFP safety investigations (i.e., prediction of accident progression) but also for estimation of the mitigation strategies efficiency.

The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC's) contribution in conjunction with Canadian industry (OPG, Bruce Power and AECL) has been to provide the CANDU component of the report. Specifically a description of the CANDU spent fuel pool and fuel handling system is provided with emphasis on the systems, component and phenomena important to the loss of cooling accident event. A description of the design encompasses the interfacing fuel handling systems, such as the fueling machine and fuel racking, the fuel pool structural components and the instrumentation important in detecting failures related to the event.Â

The CANDU limiting loss of cooling accident event is described in both the design basis accident and the hypothesized sever accident scenario. Finally the phenomena unique to a CANDU SFP accident are presented.

The presentation to be given is a summary of the CANDU section of the report, to be given to the SFP status report writing team to facilitate discussion, drafting and editing of the report. The writing team is an international group of SFP experts whose expertise with the exception of the Korean delegation is solely in LWR technology. Thus additional CANDU background information has been also provided in the presentation.

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