A nodalization study on modeling the containment and reactor pool of an integral PWR

This study investigates the impact of nodalization of the containment and reactor pool of a small integral Pressurized Water Reactor (iPWR) using the MELCOR 2.2 code. The research focuses on Design 1 of the EU-funded SASPAM-SA project, featuring a containment partially submerged in the reactor pool. Two accident scenarios were analyzed: a Design Basis Accident (DBA) and a severe accident. The simulations were conducted with four different nodalizations: a detailed base model, a single-volume containment model, a single-volume pool model, and a single-volume model for both the containment and the pool. The results indicate that while detailed nodalization can simulate temperature stratification, its effect on the overall accident simulation results, pressures and fission product releases is limited. The findings suggest that differences between single-volume and more detailed nodalizations are relatively small, with the detailed nodalization providing slightly lower containment pressures during the DBA scenario due to more efficient heat transfer.