Probability of adventitious fuel pin failures in fast breeder reactors and event tree analysis on damage propagation up to severe accident in Monju

Fukano, Yoshitaka  ; Naruto, Kenichi*; Kurisaka, Kenichi ; Nishimura, Masahiro 

Experimental studies, deterministic and probabilistic and risk assessments (PRAs) on local fault (LF) propagation in sodium cooled fast reactors (SFRs) have been performed in many countries because LFs have been historically considered as one of the possible causes of severe accidents. Adventitious fuel pin failures were considered to be the most dominant initiators of LFs in these PRAs because of high frequency of occurrence during reactor operation and possibility of subsequent pin-to-pin failure propagation. Therefore event tree analysis (ETA) on fuel element failure propagation initiated from adventitious fuel pin failure (FEFPA) in Monju was performed in this study based on state-of-the-art knowledge on experimental and analytical studies on FEFPA and reflecting latest operation procedure at emergency in Monju. Probability of adventitious fuel pin failures in SFRs which is the initiating event of this ETA was also updated in this study. It was clarified that FEFPA in Monju was negligible and could be included in core damage fraction of the anticipated transient without scram and protected loss of heat sink in the viewpoint of both probability and consequence.