Design and test of hydraulic vacuum breaker check valve for simplified boiling water reactor

In the current design of the simplified boiling water reactor, the vacuum breaker check valve is an important safety component. The vacuum breaker check valve is the only key safety components which is not passive in nature. Failure of this mechanical valve drastically reduces the passive containment cooling system cooling capability and hence containment pressure may exceed the design pressure. To eliminate this problem novel vacuum breaker check valve was developed to replace the mechanical valve. This new design is based on a passive hydraulic head, which is fail-safe and is truly passive in operation. Moreover this new design needs only one additional tank and one set of piping each to the wetwell and drywell. This system is simple in design and hence is easy to maintain and to qualify for operation. The passive vacuum breaker check valve performance was first evaluated using RELAP5. Then the passive vacuum breaker check valve was constructed and implemented in the PUMA integral test facility. Its performance was studied in a large break loss of coolant accident simulation test performed in PUMA facility.