LBLOCA in Cold Leg

When RCS break occurs, the system depressurizes and formation of steam in the core causes a
significant drop in moderator density which rapidly results in a considerable decrease in reactivity. Then
the neutron reaction in the core is terminated and prompt power in the core decreases quickly. After
that, the reactor trip and safety injection of borated water through accumulators and safety injection
pumps supplement the effects of steam formation in reducing core power to shutdown levels.

During the blowdown phase, the primary circuit quickly depressurizes down to the saturation pressure
level and produces liquid flashing and voiding of the coolant. The high powered regions of the core
experience departure from nucleate boiling, which causes a temperature excursion of the rod cladding.

The core flow in this phase is determined by the competing effects of the break flow from vessel side
and the pumps. In the first stage, this break flow is greater than the sum of the intact cold leg flows
driven by pumps, causing the core to be emptied both from the bottom and the top. Due to fast RCS
pressure decrease, the vessel side break flowrate, depending on upstream fluid pressure and enthalpy in
choked conditions, also decreases and becomes temporarily lower than the intact loops cold leg
flowrate: this results in net positive flowrate at vessel inlet and core inlet, and the core resumes some
positive flow period. But this situation is short-lived. As the pump efficiency quickly decreases due to
combined effects of assumed loss of power supply to the pumps and void fraction at pumps inlet, the
resumed positive flow into the core also decreases as well as the vapor production in the core.
Consequently, as the hydraulic resistance is lower through the core and the downcomer than through
the steam generator tubes and the pump, the flow reverses in the core. The reverse core flow can
contribute to cooling of the core.

During the blowdown phase, the RCS inventory progressively turns to only steam, except for the lower
plenum that still keeps some liquid. While the RCS pressure decreases rapidly, it eventually reaches the
initial accumulators pressure allowing their automatic discharge into the cold legs where the large
flowrate of highly sub-cooled water condenses the steam and creates water plugs near the injection
port. The water plugs oscillate, causing fluctuations in the flow of RSI into the downcomer. The reverse
steam flow in the core and in the downcomer prevents the accumulators flow from penetrating into the
downcomer, until this reverse steam flow is low enough around the end of the blowdown phase,
allowing counter current with liquid flowrate from the accumulators into the downcomer. This
corresponds to the so called "end of bypass" phase referring to previous direct bypass of accumulators
flowrate to the cold leg break. Once this bypass phase has stopped, the accumulators flowrate keeps on
refilling the vessel lower plenum up to the bottom of the core barrel and then to the bottom of the core
active part, within a few seconds after the end of depressurization. In the early reflood phase, the
downcomer water level increases rapidly due to high RSI flow from the accumulators, and stabilizes at
the cold leg elevation due to water spill-over in the broken cold leg. Reflooding starts with a surge of
sub-cooled liquid that penetrates into the core. Within a few tenths of seconds, flashing of the steam
induces a pressure spike that expels the water outside of the core towards the upper and lower plenum.
This process can repeat again several times, resulting in large core-downcomer flow oscillations that are
progressively damped as the core stored energy decreases. During this phase, the core is efficiently
cooled and the quench front progresses rapidly. Water carried out of the core is either de-entrained in
the upper plenum or carried over with the steam to the hot legs and the steam generator inlet plenum.
In the intact cold legs, the steam flow is completely condensed by the large sub-cooled RSI flowrate.

When the water in accumulators has been totally injected, the nitrogen blanket escapes from the
accumulators through the RSI piping, and penetrates into the RCS. The nitrogen pressurization of the
downcomer forces a surge of sub-cooled water into the core, which enhances core cooling. However,
once nitrogen is vented to the containment, the downcomer level is temporarily depleted. So the overall
effect of the nitrogen discharge into the primary system will result generally only in a weak benefit on
the reflood peak cladding temperature. In late reflood phase, the pressure distribution between the
core and the downcomer is settled by the downcomer driving head and the steam binding, which are
the main phenomena determining the speed of the quench front progression. Core energy heat and
stored energy keep on being released.

For LB LOCA, the most concerning point is the maximized temperature of fuel cladding. In the blowdown
phase, the core dries out and cladding temperature rapidly increases. The positive flow from intact loop
pumps and reversal flow from upper plenum will remove some part of stored energy, and cladding
temperature will decrease in two times and form two peak of temperatures: the higher temperature is
called T1. After that, reactor core is in adiabatic condition, there is almost no flowrate across the core,
so cladding temperature will increase again until the beginning of reflood. Cladding temperature arrives
at a second peak (T2) after the high flow from the accumulators enters the core in early reflood phase.
T2 usually occurs at the burst location, where the cladding temperature is much higher because of inner
and outer oxidation.

During late reflood phase, water enters the core, causing a large amount of water vaporized, and
releasing partial core energy. In that phase, the cladding temperature increases again but slower than in
adiabatic conditions, and may reach a third temperature peak (T3). At each elevation, the reflood peak
clad temperature occurs when the heat flux transferred from the pellet to the clad is balanced by the
heat flux removed from the clad by the reflooding process, with slow quench front progression in the
lower part of the core producing a flux of steam and entrained droplets of liquid that cools the upper
part of the core. T3 is the maximum value of reflood peak clad temperatures considering all core
elevations and generally occurs at an elevation combining high linear heat rate and high gap
conductance for pellet to clad heat transfer, due to moderate clad swelling up to the rod burst time. The
cladding temperature in the accident is the result of both heat released from the fuel pellets to the
cladding and heat exchanged with the coolant. The first effect mainly depends on the thermal-
mechanical characteristics and behavior of the fuel rods, like initial stored energy, core decay heat, Zr-
O2exothermic oxidation reaction and pellet-to-clad gap conductance. The second effect depends on the
core thermal-hydraulic behavior.