A simplified approach to evaluating severe accident source term for PWR

For early design of NPPs, no specific severe accident source term evaluation was considered. Some general source terms have been used for some NPPs. In order to implement a best estimate, a special source term evaluation should be implemented for an NPP. Traditional source term evaluation approaches (mechanism approach and parametric approach) have some difficulties associated with their implementation. The traditional approaches are not consistent with cost-benefit assessment. A simplified approach for evaluating severe accident source term for PWR is studied. For the simplified approach, a simplified containment event tree is established. According to representative cases selection, weighted coefficient evaluation, computation of representative source term cases and weighted computation, five containment release categories are established, including containment bypass, containment isolation failure, containment early failure, containment late failure and intact containment. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.