Assessment of MIT and UCB wall condensation tests and of the pre-release RELAP5/MOD3.2 code condensation models

摘要

In recent years, a new class of reactor designs has been proposed that utilize passive safety systems. General Electric has developed a Simplified Boiling Water Reactor (SBWR) design that relies on such passive systems. The SBWR has two passive cooling systems that involve energy transfer by condensation. These are the isolation condenser system (ICS) and the passive containment cooling systems (PCCS). It is important that such heat transfer phenomena be correctly understood and quantified. The General Electric Company has sponsored tests at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and at the University of California at Berkeley (UCB) to obtain data simulating PCCS conditions. Data was obtained with pure steam, steam-air mixtures and steam-helium mixtures. INEL has been contracted by the NRC to evaluate these tests and assess existing condensation heat transfer correlations against the test data. This report assesses the relevance of the tests to SBWR conditions and shows RELAP5/MOD3.2 predictions of the tests.