Containment Research Overview

Abstract

Containment research has made a considerable progress since the OECD special task force group published the status report on containment in 1986. Most of research conducted to date concerned the containment performance under severe accident conditions which might lead to extreme thermal and mechanical loadings to the containment. Experimental and analytical investigations on the containment behavior led us to believe that containment of the current design has a capability to withstand severe accident loadings to some extent due to the safety margin of the containment design. It is however realized that containment nevertheless will fail if the loading exceeds the design limit considerably. Recent research activities on containment have been expanded to not only loading to and performance of the containment, but also containment accident management. There is no doubt that results and findings obtained in the containment research have provided a sound data base for us to better understand the capability and the limitation of the containment and to efficiently cope with a severe accident and reduce its consequences. Based on the information obtained till now, the containment design for a future nuclear power plant will be emerged as a promising one.