Safety Evaluation of the HTTR-IS Nuclear Hydrogen Production System

Abstract

The establishment of a safety evaluation method is one of the key issues for the nuclear hydrogen production demonstration since fundamental differences in the safety philosophy between nuclear plants and chemical plants exist. In the present study, a practical safety evaluation method, which enables to design, construct, and operate hydrogen production plants under conventional chemical plant standards, is proposed. An event identification is conducted for the HTTR-IS system, a nuclear hydrogen production system by thermochemical water splitting iodine-sulfur process (IS process) utilizing the heat from the high temperature engineering test reactor (HTTR) in order to select abnormal events, which would change the scenario and quantitative results of the evaluation items from the existing HTTR safety evaluation. In addition, a safety analysis is performed for the identified events. The results of safety analysis for the identified five anticipated operational occurrences (AOOs) and three accidents (ACDs) show that evaluating items such as a primary cooling system pressure, temperatures of heat transfer tubes at pressure boundary, etc., do not exceed the acceptance criteria during the scenario. In addition, the increase of peak fuel temperature is small in the most severe case and therefore, the reactor core was not damaged and cooled sufficiently. These results will contribute to the safety review from the government and demonstration of the nuclear production of hydrogen.