Development of Non-LOCA Safety Analysis Methodology with RETRAN-3D and VIPRE-01/K

Korea Electric Power Research Institute has launched a project to develop an in-house non-loss-of-coolant-accident analysis methodology to overcome the hardships caused by the narrow analytical scopes of existing methodologies. Prior to the development, some safety analysis codes were reviewed, and RETRAN-3D and VIPRE-01 were chosen as the base codes. The codes have been modified to improve the analytical capabilities required to analyze the nuclear power plants in Korea. The methodologies of the vendors and the Electric Power Research Institute have been reviewed, and some documents of foreign utilities have been used to compensate for the insufficiencies. For the next step, a draft methodology for pressurized water reactors has been developed and modified to apply to Westinghouse-type plants in Korea. To verify the feasibility of the methodology, some events of Yonggwang Units 1 and 2 have been analyzed from the standpoints of reactor coolant system pressure and the departure from nucleate boiling ratio. The results of the analyses show trends similar to those of the Final Safety Analysis Report.