ULTIMATE CAPACITY OF A MARK-II PRIMARY CONTAINMENT USING NEW PROBABILISTIC FAILURE CRITERIA

In the past few years, new failure criteria to determine the ultimate capacity of nuclear primary containments associated with exceeding pro bability have been developed. Ln this paper, a study concerning the La guna Verde Mark II reinforced concrete containment is reported. This s tudy was accomplished using an advanced non-linear constitutive and fi nite element model. Analyses were performed for beyond-original-design pressure and temperature assumptions. The paper describes the non-lin ear analysis methodology, the various failure criteria, and the applic ation of the results in a probabilistic framework. The probabilistic a pproach addresses criteria for predicting liner tear, penetration fail ure, and through-wall shear failure. It attempts to assign reasonable estimates of leak area to different failure mechanisms and it allows t he evaluation of conditional probabilities for the postulated severe a ccidents selected. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science S.A.