The development and application of overheating failure model of FBR steam generator tubes

Hamada, Hirotsugu  ; not registered; not registered; not registered ; Hiroi, Hiroshi*

The following items have been studies to evaluate overheating failure of FBR generator heat transfer tubes: (1)To establish a structural integrity analysis method. The strength standard values for 2.25Cr-1Mo steel was established taking account of time dependent effect to overheating failure mechanism based on high temperature (700 - 1200C) creep data and was validated by tube rupture simulation test data. (2)To improve and validate blow down analytical method. The analytical result by use of BLOOPH, the FBR blow down code, was compared with that by use of RELAP-5, the general purpose thermo-hydraulic code, and a good agreement was obtained. (3)To quantitatively validate the entire overheating analysis model by sodium water reaction data Sodium-water reaction tests of SWAT-3 and LLTR were analyzed using above mentioned analytical method. The ductile fracture occurred earlier than the creep fracture in the analysis and the comparison of tube failure times with the experiments showed sufficient conservativeness. Based on the above studies, the analytical method was applied to PFR superheater leak event and the Monju steam generator accidental analysis. The followings were quantatitively shown through the analysis: (1)The most important cause that multi-tube failure occurred in the 1987 PFR superheater-2 leak is that the superheater did not equip a fast steam dump system at the time of the leak event. (2)Overheating failure will not occur under any operational conditions of Monju in both steady state and transient phases such as water/steam blow-down. (3)Although safety margin becomes small when the water/steam flow rate becomes small during the blow-down, the modification of the plant such as hastening blow-down by equipping more relief valves will drastically improve the safety margin.