Home > Electronic
Reading Room > Document
Collections > NUREG-Series
Publications > Publications
Prepared by NRC Contractors
> NUREG/CR-3330
Vulnerability of Nuclear Power Plant Structures to Large External Fires (NUREG/CR-3330)
On this page:
Download complete document
The following links on this page are to documents in Adobe Portable Document
Format (PDF). See our Plugins, Viewers, and
Other Tools page for more information. For successful viewing of PDF documents on our site please be sure to use the latest version of Adobe.
Publication Information
Date Published: August 1983
Sandia National Laboratories
Albuquerque, New Mexico 87185
operated by Sandia Corporation
for the
US Department of Energy
Prepared for Division of Risk Analysis
Office of Nuclear Regulatory Research
US Nuclear Regulatory Commission
Washington, DC 20555
Under Memorandum of Understanding DOE 40-550-75
NRC FIN No. A1214
Availability
Notice
Abstract
This report examines the inherent vulnerability of
nuclear power plant structures to the thermal environments
arising from large, external fires. The inherent
vulnerability is the capacity of the concrete safety-related
structures to absorb thermal loads without exceeding the
appropriate thermal and structural design criteria. The
potential sources of these thermal environments are large,
offsite fires arising from accidents involving the
transportation or storage of large quantities of flammable
gases or liquids.
A realistic thermal response analysis of a concrete
panel was performed using three limiting criteria:
temperature at the first rebar location, erosion and
ablation of the front (exterior) surface due to high heat
fluxes, and temperature at the back (interior) surface. The
results of this analysis yield a relationship between
incident heat flux and the maximum allowable exposure
duration.
A simple fire analysis method was developed to predict
the thermal flux incident upon a target as a function of
range. A key feature is the use of an experimentally
observed specific power emitted from the surface of large
fires.
Example calculations for the break of a 0.91 m (3')
diameter high-pressure natural gas pipeline and a 1 mZ
hole in a 2-1/2 million gallon gasoline tank show that the
resulting fires do not pose a significant hazard for ranges
of 500 m or greater.
|
