Canada’s L-3 MAPPS is to supply a severe accident simulator to Westinghouse for an unnamed Tokyo customer – the company’s first sale of a plant simulator to Japan.
The contract is for a full-scale 1000MWe pressurised water reactor simulator equipped with severe accident simulation capability is part of a larger project that Westinghouse is fulfilling for the customer, L-3 MAPPS said. The value of the contract was not revealed.
The simulator is scheduled to be in service in the first quarter of 2016 and will be used to train operators to deal with both normal operations and severe accident conditions. It will be based on L-3’s Orchid simulation environment and will operate within a virtual control room to provide a full-scale training environment. The virtual panels and instructor station will be made available in Japanese. The separately licensed Modular Accident Analysis Program (MAAP5) from the Electric Power Research Institute will also be connected to the simulator. MAAP5 is used to predict the progression of light water reactor accidents including assessments of core damage and radiological transport.
The simulator will be equipped with two- and three-dimensional animated, interactive visualisations of the reactor vessel, containment building and used fuel pool to provide trainees with additional insight into the behaviour of the plant during severe accidents. It will be capable of supporting severe accident training scenarios relating to degraded reactor core conditions leading to fuel melting, including cladding oxidation and hydrogen generation, vessel failure, containment failure and fission product release.
