Station Blackout Analysis of Lungmen ABWR Using TRACE

The Lungmen NPP is the first ABWR (Advanced Boiling Water Reactor) nuclear power plant in Taiwan, consisting of two identical units with 3,926 MWt rated thermal power each and 52.2×10⁶ kg/h rated core flow. The core of Lungmen NPP has 872 bundles of GE14 fuel. There are 10 reactor internal pumps (RIP) in the reactor vessel, providing 111% rated core flow at the nominal operating speed of 151.84 rad/sec. A station blackout (SBO) is defined as the loss of offsite electrical power concurrent with turbine trip and unavailability of the onsite emergency AC power. These result in the loss of core cooling and heat removal systems that rely on the above AC power for their operation. In this research, the TRACE SBO model of Lungmen ABWR has been developed in order for the analysis of SBO transient. The initial condition of SBO transient is 100% rated power/100% rated core flow. The TRACE’s results show that the reactor fuel temperature has been reached 1088.71 K (the zirconium-water reaction may generate) at about 3200 sec. It indicates that the fuels might be damaged after 3200 sec if the RCIC and ACIWA failed to activate in this transient.