Validation study of initiating phase evaluation method for the core disruptive accident in an SFR

Ishida, Shinya  ; Kawada, Kenichi   ; Fukano, Yoshitaka  

Core Disruptive Accident (CDA) has been considered as one of the important safety issues in the severe accident evaluation of Sodium-cooled Fast Reactor (SFR), and SAS4A code is developed for Initiating Phase (IP) of CDA. Phenomena Identification and Ranking Table (PIRT) approach was applied to the validation of SAS4A code in order to enhance its reliability in this study. SAS4A was validated in the following steps: (1) selection of the figure of merit (FOM) corresponding to Unprotected Loss Of Flow (ULOF) which is one of the most important and typical events in CDA, (2) identification of the phenomena involved in ULOF, (3) ranking the important phenomena, (4) development of the code validation test matrix, and (5) test analyses for validation corresponding to the test matrix. The reliability and validity of SAS4A code were significantly enhanced by this validation with PIRT approach.