Stand-alone Containment Analysis of the Phébus FPT-1 test with the ASTEC and the MELCOR codes

The estimation of fission products (FPs) release from the containment system of a nuclear plant to the external environment during a severe accident (SA) is a quite complex task. In the last 30–40 yr, several efforts were made to understand and to investigate the different phenomena occurring in such a kind of accidents in the primary coolant system and in the containment. These researches moved along two tracks: understanding of involved phenomenologies through the execution of different experiments and creation of numerical codes capable to simulate such phenomena. These codes are continuously developed to reflect the actual SA state of the art, but it is necessary to continuously check that modifications and improvements are able to increase the quality of the obtained results. For this purpose, also a continuous verification and validation work should be carried out. Therefore, the aim of the present work is to re-analyze the Phebus fission products test 1 (FPT-1) test employing the accident source term evaluation code (ASTEC) and MELCOR codes (respectively, ASTEC v.2.0 revision 3 patch 3 and MELCOR V2.1.6840 version). The analysis focuses on the stand-alone containment aspects of the test, and three different modelizations of the containment vessel have been developed showing that at least 15/20 control volumes (CVs) are necessary for the spatial schematization to correctly predict the test thermal hydraulics and the aerosol behavior. Furthermore, the paper summarizes the main thermal-hydraulic results and presents different sensitivity analyses carried out on the aerosols and FPs behavior.