Core melt progression and consequence analysis methodology development in support of the Savannah River Reactor PSA

A three-level Probabilistic Safety Assessment (PSA) of production reactor operation has been underway since 1985 at the US Department of Energy's Savannah River Site (SRS). The goals of this analysis are to: Analyze existing margins of safety provided by the heavy-water reactor (HWR) design challenged by postulated severe accidents; Compare measures of risk to the general public and onsite workers to guideline values, as well as to those posed by commercial reactor operation; and Develop the methodology and database necessary to prioritize improvements to engineering safety systems and components, operator training, and engineering projects that contribute significantly to improving plant safety. PSA technical staff from the Westinghouse Savannah River Company (WSRC) and Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) have performed the assessment despite two obstacles: A variable baseline plant configuration and power level; and a lack of technically applicable code methodology to model the SRS reactor conditions. This paper discusses the detailed effort necessary to modify the requisite codes before accident analysis insights for the risk assessment were obtained.