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UN-DOT
Classification of hazardous materials subject to shipping and storage regulations
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Data demonstrate the consequences of process upsets, such as failed equipment or improper procedures, and guide mitigation strategies including Emergency Relief System (ERS) design
Reaction Calorimetry
Data yield heat and gas removal requirements to control the desired process chemistry
Battery Safety

Testing to support safe design of batteries and electrical power backup facilities particularly to satisfy UL9540a ed.4

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Develop critical safety data for inclusion in SDS documents

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Analysis and testing to identify and prevent unwanted hydraulic pressure transients in process piping
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Fauske & Associates fulfills the requirements of ISO/IEC 17025:2017 in the field of Testing

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Fauske & Associates fulfills the requirements of ISO 9001:2015
Dust Hazards Analysis
Evaluate your process to identify combustible dust hazards and perform dust explosion testing
On-Site Risk Management
On-site safety studies can help identify explosibility and chemical reaction hazards so that appropriate testing, simulations, or calculations are identified to support safe scale up
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Design emergency pressure relief systems to mitigate the consequences of unwanted chemical reactivity and account for two-phase flow using the right tools and methods
Deflagrations (Dust/Vapor/Gas)

Properly size pressure relief vents to protect your processes from dust, vapor, and gas explosions

Effluent Handling

Pressure relief sizing is just the first step and it is critical to safely handle the effluent discharge from an overpressure event

FATE™ & Facility Modeling

FATE (Facility Flow, Aerosol, Thermal, and Explosion) is a flexible, fast-running code developed and maintained by Fauske and Associates under an ASME NQA-1 compliant QA program.

Mechanical, Piping, and Electrical
Engineering and testing to support safe plant operations and develop solutions to problems in heat transfer, fluid, flow, and electric power systems
Hydrogen Safety
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Our Nuclear Services Group is recognized for comprehensive evaluations to help commercial nuclear power plants operate efficiently and stay compliant
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Safety analysis to underpin decomissioning process at facilities which have produced or used radioactive nuclear materials
Adiabatic Safety Calorimeters (ARSST and VSP2)

Low thermal inertial adiabatic calorimeters specially designed to provide directly scalable data that are critical to safe process design

Other Lab Equipment and Parts for the DSC/ARC/ARSST/VSP2 Calorimeters

Products and equipment for the process safety or process development laboratory

FERST

Software for emergency relief system design to ensure safe processing of reactive chemicals, including consideration of two-phase flow and runaway chemical reactions

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Recent Posts

MAAP5 Analysis of Various Injection Strategies during Extended Loss of AC Power

Posted by Fauske & Associates on 05.17.17

Fauske & Associates, LLC (FAI) is deeply involved in the analysis of severe accidents and the development of severe accident computational models. FAI uses the Modular Accident Analysis Program (MAAP) software that is owned and licensed by the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI). MAAP is utilized by nuclear utilities worldwide to analyze abnormal plant transients and severe accidents, such as station blackouts (SBO) or loss of coolant accidents (LOCA), and to guide development of severe accident management guidelines (SAMGs). Severe accident management consists of mitigation actions before and after core damage has occurred.

During shutdown conditions, the severe accident progression is not very sensitive to the initial water level in the vessel except with regard to the time of core uncovery and core damage. However, the thermal hydraulic conditions in the primary system, steam generators, and containment can affect the SAMG actions and progression of the accident. If mobile equipment is unavailable for an extended loss of AC power (ELAP) during shutdown conditions with an open RCS (pressurizer or steam generator manways are open), establishment of gravity injection from the refueling water storage tank (RWST) or condensate storage tank (CST) into the RCS can be an important operator action.

An example analysis of gravity injection during an extended loss of AC power (ELAP) is shown for how MAAP5 was used for shutdown SAMG development. Three sample MAAP runs were performed for a typical Westinghouse type four loop plant:

  1. One 5” gravity injection line without any containment heat removal and without containment vent
  2. One 5” gravity injection line with containment vent (8” vent line opened at 1.22 bar (3 psig) and left open)
  3. Two 5” gravity injection lines with containment vent

The runs were stopped when the core exit temperature exceeded 1200 °F. An analysis of the results is provided in the following paragraph.

After the loss of residual heat removal (RHR) cooling, the core temperature reaches the saturation temperature soon and boiling occurs in the core. The boiling in the core pushes two-phase water into the hot leg and the pressurizer. As a result, the water level in the pressurizer increases as shown in Figure 1(a). Without the containment vent, the gravity injection soon stops because of the high containment pressure and high water level in the pressurizer. With the containment vent available, the high pressurizer level and up to 3 psig of containment back pressure shuts off the gravity injection from time to time resulting in core uncovery in both cases with one and two injection lines. Figure 1(b) shows the mixture water level in the core. When the injection flow stops, the core was uncovered and the mixture level decreases enough to reduce the steaming rate and the two-phase carry-over to the pressurizer.

In most conditions, the pressurizer surge line is flooded and water drainage from the pressurizer to the hot leg is prevented. However, the pressurizer level decreases from time to time due to counter-current water drainage when the core is uncovered. Figure 1(c) shows the containment pressure. Without the containment vent, high containment pressure prevents gravity injection. For the other two cases, an 8” containment vent line was opened at 3 psig and remained open throughout the remainder of the sequence. Figure 1(d) shows the hottest core node temperature. The number of lines used for gravity injection makes some difference in the pressurizer water level and timing of core uncovery. However, the general responses between two cases are similar. For the case with two injection lines, the run is stopped because the core exit temperature exceeded 1200 F.

The success of gravity injection during an ELAP with the pressurizer manway open depends on several plant specific factors:

  1. Elevation difference between the RWST and RCS and the water level in the RWST
  2. Availability of external RWST makeup
  3. Containment vent (or containment heat removal) available or not
  4. Number of injection lines, size, and the discharge coefficient of the piping
  5. Decay heat

containment-vent-injection-line

In the samples above, MAAP5 was used to predict the primary system and containment response to gravity injection during an ELAP with and without containment venting and at various injection flow rates. Analysis can also be done to determine timings of events such as timing of core uncovery and time to vent the containment for various scenarios such as:

  1. Accidents initiated during shutdown conditions when the RCS is closed and SG injection is available to 1 steam
    generator
  2. Gravity injection from the RWST during an ELAP (as demonstrated here)
  3. External injection using a fire pump for a case when the gravity injection has failed, and more


The insights from plant specific MAAP5 calculations similar to the sample calculations can be used to guide SAMG development.

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