Damage evaluation of 500 MWe Indian Pressurized Heavy Water Reactor nuclear containment for aircraft impact

Safety assessment of Indian nuclear containments has been carried out for aircraft impact. The loading time history for Boeing and Airbus categories of aircrafts is generated based on the principle of momentum transfer of crushable aircrafts. The case studies include the analysis of BWR Mark III containment as a benchmark problem and analyses of Pressurised Heavy Water Reactor containment (inner and outer containment) for impulsive loading due to aircraft impact. Initially, the load is applied on outer containment wall model and subsequently the load is transferred to inner containment after the local perforation of the outer containment wall is noticed in the transient simulation. The analysis methodology evolved in the present work would be useful for studying the behavior of double containment walls and multi barrier structural configurations for aircraft impact with higher energies. The present analysis illustrates that with the provision of double containments for Indian nuclear power plants, adequate reserve strength is available for the case of an extremely low probability event of missile impact generated due to the commercial aircrafts operated in India.