Vulnerability Assessment of Conventional and Base-Isolated Nuclear Power Plants to Blast Loadings. Issue 4 (December 2013) - Huang, Yin-Nan
A blast assessment of a sample power reactor building is performed for an assumed threat of 2000 kg of TNT explosive detonated on hard rock at a standoff distance to the reactor building of 10 m. The air- and ground-shock waves produced by the design threat are generated and used for performance assessment. The air-blast loading on the sample reactor building is computed using a Computational Fluid Dynamics code, Air3D, and the ground-shock time series is generated using an attenuation model for rock response. Response-history analysis of the sample conventional and base-isolated reactor buildings to external blast loadings is performed using LS-DYNA. The structural responses, including acceleration, drift and peak floor acceleration demands on key secondary systems attached to the internal structure of the reactor building are identified for both the conventional and base-isolated sample reactor buildings. The results show the installation of a base isolation system does not increase the vulnerability of either the containment vessel or internal structure to air-blast loading and reduces the ground-shock response by orders of magnitude.