| In present, the development and analysis of Accident Progression Event Trees (APETs) are performed in a manner that is computationally time consuming, difficult to reproduce and also can be phenomenologically inconsistent. One of the principal deficiencies lies in the static nature of conventional APETs. In the conventional event tree techniques, the sequence of events is pre-determined in a fixed order based on the expert judgments. The main objective of this PhD dissertation was to develop a software tool (ADAPT) for automated APET generation using the concept of dynamic event trees. As implied by the name, in dynamic event trees the order and timing of events are determined by the progression of the accident. The tool determines the branching times from a severe accident analysis code based on user specified criteria for branching. It assigns user specified probabilities to every branch, tracks the total branch probability, and truncates branches based on the given pruning/truncation rules to avoid an unmanageable number of scenarios.;The function of a dynamic APET developed includes prediction of the conditions, timing, and location of containment failure or bypass leading to the release of radioactive material, and calculation of probabilities of those failures. Thus, scenarios that can potentially lead to early containment failure or bypass, such as through accident induced failure of steam generator tubes, are of particular interest. Also, the work is focused on treatment of uncertainties in severe accident phenomena such as creep rupture of major RCS components, hydrogen burn, containment failure, timing of power recovery, etc.;Although the ADAPT methodology (Analysis of Dynamic Accident Progression Trees) could be applied to any severe accident analysis code, in this dissertation the approach is demonstrated by applying it to the MELCOR code [1]. A case study is presented involving station blackout with the loss of auxiliary feedwater system for a pressurized water reactor. The specific plant analyzed is the Zion Nuclear Power Plant, which is a Westinghouse-designed system that has been decommissioned. |
