Roles of Analytical Simulation in SAMG Validation

Abstract of the technical paper/presentation presented at:
International Severe Accident Management Conference (ISAMC 2018)
October 15‒18, 2018

Prepared by: Quanmin Lei
Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission

Abstract:

The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) led a task group called “Informing Severe Accident Management Guidance (SAMG) and Actions through Analytical Simulation” under the Nuclear Energy Agency’s (NEA) Working Group on Analysis and Management of Accidents (WGAMA) and compiled a state-of-the-art report on this topic.

This presentation will focus on the Canadian approach to validating a fully developed, plant-specific SAMG and identify areas for strengthening and improvement. Various methods are used to assess the effectiveness of severe accident management (SAM), including the use of SAMG and other post-Fukushima guidelines such as the Emergency Mitigating Equipment Guidelines (EMEG). In this presentation, emphasis is given to how analytical simulation can play an important role in SAMG validation.

The presentation will promote a discussion on the following aspects:

• an overview of a SAM program, of which SAMG is a key component:
• A SAM program evaluation considers many aspects and activities.
• Assessing SAMG strategies and actions through analytical simulation is only one of these activities.
• methods of SAMG verification and validation: Analytical simulation is one of the means of informing the effectiveness of SAM
• focusing on areas for assessing SAMG actions through simulation: Questions such as the following may be asked:
• What is the impact of an earlier or later initiation of a prevention or mitigation action?
• What are the environmental conditions associated with the expectation of the action?
• What are the positive and negative outcomes of the action?
• roles of severe accident analysis codes to support SAM
• use of severe accident analysis codes to inform the adequacy and completeness of a plant-specific SAMG
• examples of analytical simulation of the SAMG-specified actions and how the results or messages derived from such a simulation could be useful

Keywords: severe accident management, SAM evaluation, SAMG, SAMG verification and validation, severe accident analysis

To obtain a copy of the abstract’s document, please contact us at cnsc.info.ccsn@cnsc-ccsn.gc.ca or call 613-995-5894 or 1-800-668-5284 (in Canada). When contacting us, please provide the title and date of the abstract.