Annals of Nuclear Energy 160 (2021) 108373

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Annals of Nuclear Energy

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A nodal sensitivity study of MELCOR simulation for severe accidents in a

pressurized water reactor
Nan Zhao a, Yangli Chen a, Weimin Ma a,⇑, Sevostian Bechta a, Patrick Isaksson b
a
Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Roslagstullsbacken 21, 106 91 Stockholm, Sweden
b
Swedish Radiation Safety Authority (SSM), Solna strandväg 96, 171 54 Solna, Sweden

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: This paper presents a sensitivity study of nodal scheme in MELCOR simulation of severe accidents in a
Received 12 February 2021 pressurized water reactor, with the objective to estimate the nodal effects on some in-vessel and ex-
Received in revised form 7 April 2021 vessel processes and phenomena, including thermal–hydraulic response, core degradation and reloca-
Accepted 28 April 2021
tion, hydrogen generation, vessel failure, containment pressurization and venting, source term. For this
Available online 10 May 2021
purpose, three nodal schemes (i.e., coarse, medium and fine meshes) of the COR package of the
MELCOR code are chosen to analyze two severe accident scenarios: small break loss of coolant accident
Keywords:
(SBLOCA) and large break loss-of-coolant accident (LBLOCA), both combined with station blackout. The
Pressurized water reactor
Severe accident
results show that the nodal schemes mainly affect the calculations of heat transfers from the core to cool-
MELCOR simulation ant and heat structures, relatively affecting the core degradation and relocation to the lower head of the
Mesh sensitivity analysis reactor pressure vessel. As for the consequences, the coarse mesh tends to predict slower core relocation
progressions and a later failure of RPV lower head. Moreover, more hydrogen generation by cladding oxi-
dation can be observed in the coarse mesh case. The nodal schemes have little impact on the estimation
of in-containment source term. Meanwhile, the simulations with fine mesh may also provide more
detailed distributions of corium masses and temperatures, as well as heat fluxes, affecting thermal and
mechanic behavior of RPV lower head.
Ó 2021 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

1. Introduction
MELCOR is a fully integrated, engineering-level computer code
developed by Sandia National Laboratories under the auspices of
the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), with the primary
purpose to estimate accident progression and source terms during
postulated severe accidents in light water reactors (Humphries
et al., 2015a). The code has been employed to simulate severe acci-
dents which occurred in nuclear power plants (NPPs) – for
instance, analyzing the Fukushima accidents for better under-
standing of the severe accidents (Li and Oka, 2014; Fernandez-
Moguel and Birchley, 2015; Li et al., 2018). The code was also used
to establish severe accident response guidelines for operating reac-
tors (Hsu et al., 2017). Moreover, the code is a powerful tool to ana-
lyze severe accident mitigation strategies, e.g., the feasibility study
of an IVR strategy with External Reactor Vessel Cooling (ERVC) of a
large advanced passive PWR (Ignacio et al., 2017a,b, 2018; Jin et al.,
2015; Galushin and Kudinov, 2018; Ignacio, 2017). Other applica-
tions of MELCOR include severe accident analysis and cooling of
⇑ Corresponding author.
E-mail address: ma@safety.sci.kth.se (W. Ma).
spent fuel pools (Jäckel, 2011; Huang and Ma, 2019), as well as
the safety analysis of HTGR (Jeon et al., 2014).
The MELCOR code treats a broad spectrum of severe accident
phenomena, including thermal–hydraulic responses in reactor
coolant system (RCS) and the containment; core degradation and
relocation; hydrogen generation and transport; molten core-
concrete interaction (MCCI); fission product release and transport,
etc. There are multiple modules, also called packages, in the MEL-
COR code for the modelling of specific severe accident phenomena.
For instance, the COR package models core degradation and reloca-
tion, and the CVH and FL packages model the thermal hydraulics.
The MELCOR packages are unified in a computational framework
to reflect the coupling and feedbacks between accident
phenomena.
The COR package is one of the most important packages of MEL-
COR, since it deals with core melt progression in the reactor pres-
sure vessel (RPV). The COR package models the thermal response of
the internal structures (e.g., fuel rods, control rods, core plates) in
the core and the lower plenum, the relocation of the core and fail-
ure of the RPV lower head. To track the core melt progression, the
COR package uses a two-dimensional nodalization whose meshes
cover both core and lower plenum regions with radial rings and

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.anucene.2021.108373
0306-4549/Ó 2021 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd.
This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
N. Zhao, Y. Chen, W. Ma et al.
axial levels. Due to the complexity of severe accident and the his-
torical limitations of computing power, the MELCOR code was ini-
tially conceived as a lumped-parameter code featured with many
empirical correlations and coarse mesh. During the development
of MELCOR, more mechanistic models have been introduced and
included in the code. The nodalization of the COR package ranges
from 3 ~ 4 rings and 10 ~ 15 levels for a simple reactor safety anal-
ysis, to 5 ~ 7 rings and 15 ~ 19 levels for a typical MELCOR analysis.
Such coarse meshes may be sufficient for a general safety analysis,
such as estimation of source terms and containment pressure
response, but in some circumstances, one may need a fine mesh
for the COR package in order to obtain detailed information of spa-
tial progression during a severe accident. For example, in a coupled
thermo-mechanical simulation of MELCOR with ANSYS Mechani-
cal, the spatial mapping and data exchange between the two codes
may call for a fine mesh in the lower head of MELCOR modeling
(Villanueva et al., 2012).
Moreover, little work has been conducted to investigate the
effect of the COR nodalization on MELCOR simulation results. This
reiterates the need to perform detailed MELCOR analysis by mesh
refinement, which was a challenge in the past but becomes possi-
ble with the recent leap of computing power. To fill the gap in con-
temporary knowledge in MELCOR capabilities, a nodal sensitivity
study (Chen et al., 2019) has been performed for a boiling water
reactor (BWR). The results indicated that the MELCOR simulation
results are affected by the COR nodalization: i) a slower accident
progression is predicted when the COR nodalization is shifting
from coarse to fine mesh; ii) the coarse mesh leads to more hydro-
gen generation, iii) the radioactive release to the environment after
24 h is insensitive to COR nodalization. This implies that the coarse
mesh in MELCOR simulation tends to be conservative in severe
accident risk assessment.
The present study is in line with the previous work (Chen et al.,
2019) for a Nordic BWR but has a focus on an PWR of Westing-
house design. Since the PWR has a different core structure from
the BWR, it is expected that the effects of the COR nodalization
on the MELCOR simulation results could be quantitatively different
as well. This study will start from a brief introduction of modelling
and COR mesh features in the MELCOR model of PWR in Section 2.
Section 3 will give the conditions and assumptions of the initial
events leading to severe accidents. The results will be presented
in Section 4 from three aspects: accident progression, hydrogen
generation of cladding oxidation, in-containment source term
and radiative release due to containment venting.
2. MELCOR model of PWR
A MELCOR nodalization normally indicates the determination of
the thermal–hydraulic nodes (incl. flow paths) and the core mesh,
to model the specific design of a reactor. The thermal–hydraulic
nodes show the control volumes (CVs) of the reactor system, and
the connection of CVs by flow paths. CVs are the basic volume to
solve the governing equations of water, steam, or non-
condensable gases. The CVs could be flow channels and chambers
in the primary and secondary circuits and the containment. The
core mesh is used by COR package for the spatial evolution of core
during degradation and relocation.
The pressurized water reactor (PWR) simulated in the present
study is a classical Westinghouse design with three primary loops
and 3152 MW of thermal power. Both thermal–hydraulic nodes
and the core mesh are described in this section. Besides, this sec-
tion also briefly describes some modeling features of the COR pack-
age, which may help to explain the outcomes of the simulations,
i.e., to help pry the physical causes why and how the nodal scheme
affects the MELCOR simulation results.
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Annals of Nuclear Energy 160 (2021) 108373
2.1. Thermal-hydraulic nodes
Fig. 2 illustrates the thermal–hydraulic nodes of the MELCOR
model for the primary circuit and the secondary circuit of the
PWR. The volume inside reactor pressure vessel is separated into
several CVs including flow channels in the active core region,
bypass, downcomer, lower plenum (incl. lower head), upper ple-
num and upper head. When the reactor coolant is injected into
the vessel, the coolant flows down through the downcomer to
the lower plenum. The coolant is heated up in the active core,
and then enters the primary sides of steam generators (SGs)
through the hot legs. The secondary sides of the SGs act as heat
sinks by heat transfer through the SG tubes.
The coolant system contains three circulation loops, and each
loop consist of a hot leg, a cold leg, a reactor coolant pump (RCP)
and a steam generator. For simplicity in the MELCOR model, two
identical loops are grouped into one (the left of Fig. 1) with double
capacity of the original loop, while the third loop with the pressur-
izer (the right of Fig. 1) is treated separately. Correspondingly, the
secondary circuits of the identical loops are also grouped one. In
the primary loops, several control volumes (CVs) and flow paths
(FLs) are used for the hot leg, the SG tubes, the cold leg, and the
RCP. In the secondary circuits, the nodes are assigned to the down-
comer, boiler, separator/dryer and dome of the SG as well as the
main steam line and the turbine.
The pressurizer and its surge line are each modeled by CVs. The
surge line connects the pressurizer with the hot leg of the right
loop in Fig. 1. The top of the pressurizer is connected with the pres-
surizer relief tank (PRT) through the safety relief valves (SRVs) and
three identical Pilot-operating relief valves (PORVs). The pressur-
izer relief tank is a specific safety equipment to avoid the direct
steam release into the containment. The steam is condensed in
the PRT and then flows into the containment when the overpres-
sure in the PRT breaks the pressure rupture disc between the RPT
and the containment. The creep rupture of the surge line is simu-
lated with the Larson-Miller creep rupture model (Humphries
et al., 2015b), which relies on the steam temperature and material
properties of the surge line.
The PWR has a large dry containment, consisting of a cylindrical
building of pre-stressed concrete with a semispherical dome. In the
MELCOR model of the PWR plant, the entire containment is repre-
sented by seven CVs as shown in Fig. 2: the reactor cavity, the
lower compartment, the annular compartment, the compartment
accommodating the two identical SGs, the compartment with pres-
surizer, the refueling pool and the dome.
In addition, the MELCOR model of thermal-hydraulics also
includes the safety systems, such as multiple-venturi scrubber sys-
tem (MVSS), accumulators (ACC), auxiliary feedwater system
(AFW), high pressure safety injection (HPSI) and low head safety
injection (LHSI). The MVSS is used in the Swedish PWRs and BWRs
for containment venting, comprising assemblies of small venture
scrubbers submerged in the water pool of a storage tank. The MVSS
can be activated either passively by the containment pressure via a
rupture disc, or by manual operation of relief valves. The safety
injection functions (HPSI, LHSI) are provided by power-operated
centrifugal pumps. The water source is taken from the Refueling
water storage tank (RWST).
2.2. Core mesh
Three different nodal schemes (coarse, medium and fine mesh)
for core mesh are developed and shown in Fig. 3. The coarse mesh
(Fig. 3a) contains 6 rings and 20 levels, in which the core region
occupies the inner 4 rings and upper 10 levels. The bottom 10
levels are the lower plenum region. The medium mesh (Fig. 3b)
consists of 10 rings and 43 levels, in which the core region has
N. Zhao, Y. Chen, W. Ma et al. Annals of Nuclear Energy 160 (2021) 108373

Fig. 1. Thermal-hydraulic nodes of MELCOR for the primary and secondary circuits of the PWR.

2.3. Core modeling features

As mentioned above, in the MELCOR simulation of a light water

reactor, the mesh in the COR package covers the core and the lower
plenum inside the reactor pressure vessel. The thermal response,
core degradation and relocation of corium are treated within each
cell of the core mesh with a lumped-parameter approach. Some
modeling features related to mesh in the COR package are briefly
described as follows.
An intercell radiation model is implemented in the COR package
to calculate radiation heat transfer among the components within
the cells, across cell boundaries, and from the components to the
steam. The thermal radiation becomes dominant for decay heat
removal when the core is uncovered during the severe accident
of a light water reactor, and therefore it is interesting to investigate
the effect of the core mesh on the thermal radiation.
According to Humphries et al. (2015b), the radiation model cal-
culates the balance of radiation energy in the cell i:
X
Ri ¼ Rim þ Rij ð1Þ
j

where Ri is the net heat transfer from the surface of the cell i, which
can be expressed in terms of radiosity and the incident radiation.
ei
Ri ¼ Ai ðrT4i  Ji Þ ð2Þ
1  ei
Fig. 2. Thermal-hydraulic nodes of MELCOR for the containment.
Here Rim and Rij are the heat transfer rates from surface of the
cell i to the steam and the other surface j, respectively:
   
inner 7 rings and upper 27 levels. The fine mesh (Fig. 3c) refines the Rim ¼ Ai em Ji  rT4m / T4i  T4m ð3Þ
nodalization with 15 rings and 67 levels, in which the core region
occupies the inner 10 rings and upper 45 levels. Since the axial and
Rij ¼ Ai F ij sij ðJ i  J j Þ ð4Þ
radial distributions of decay heat are interpolated according to the
nodes in the axial and radial directions, the fine mesh of core where, Ai is the surface area of the cell i, ei and em are the emissivity
nodalization allows more accurate modeling of the decay heat of the cell i surface and steam, which are given in MELCOR. F ij and sij
power distributions, as shown in Fig. 4. are the view factor and geometric mean transmittance between sur-
3
N. Zhao, Y. Chen, W. Ma et al. Annals of Nuclear Energy 160 (2021) 108373

Fig. 3. Core mesh for the COR package of MELCOR.

3. Accident scenarios and simulation matrix

3.1. Accident scenarios

To perform the nodal sensitivity study, two severe accident sce-

narios are selected in the present MELCOR simulations, which are
large break loss of coolant accident (LBLOCA) and small break loss
of coolant accident (SBLOCA), both without active safety injections,
i.e., combined with station blackout. They are the representative
accident scenarios extensively chosen in severe accident analysis
(Groudev et al., 2017; Jobst et al., 2018). As shown in more details
in Table 1, the LBLOCA scenario is initiated by a double-ended guil-
lotine break on the cold leg of the right loop in Fig. 1, downstream
of the RCP. The SBLOCA scenario is initiated by three stuck open
PORVs.
Fig. 4. Axial decay heat power distribution.
In both scenarios, the station blackout (SBO) is assumed with
the loss of all AC power supplies, including the grid power and die-
sel generators. The steam driven auxiliary feedwater on the sec-
faces i and j, which can be defined by users. T i and T m are the tem- ondary side is also assumed to be unavailable. Hence, the coolant
peratures of the cell i and steam, and r the Stefan–Boltzmann systems driven by pumps are unavailable, including the safety
constant. injection systems and feed water systems. The steam driven auxil-
From the above equations, one can see that the view factor and iary feedwater on the secondary side is also assumed to be unavail-
able. Besides, the containment spray is assumed to be unavailable.
T 4i  T 4m will affect the heat transfer through the intercell radiation
However, the passive systems such as the accumulators and MVSS
model (FCELR) in the COR package. Due to the specific approach of
are still capable of operation. The accidents are assumed to be ini-
the calculation, the view factor may be different from mesh to
tiated at 0 s in the simulations, together with the turbine trips
mesh. For instance, the calculation of inter-cell view factor using
immediately due to lower pressure signals, and the main steam
cell boundary area is appropriate for the prediction of intercell
radiation of large cells but that may not be the case for small cells
(Humphries et al., 2015b). Meanwhile, the value of T 4i  T 4m is influ-
enced by cell size since the average temperature of each cell is var- Table 1
ied in different meshes. Accident scenarios.
The core mesh also affects the core relocation phenomena, Scenario Initiating event Break Initial conditions
including candling of molten core materials, transportation of area/diameter
additional intact materials with molten material, radial relocation LBLOCA Double-ended guillotine 2  0.3832 m2/ - LOCA at 0 s.
of molten pools, and formation of flow blockages and molten pools break of a cold leg 2  699 mm - Loss of HHSI,
(Chen et al., 2019). Moreover, the cladding oxidation is connected SBLOCA PORVs stuck-open 3  9.71 cm2/ LPSI, and
to the limits of the oxidant inventory (steam or oxygen) in each 61 mm AFW.
- RCPs and tur-
cell. Last but not the least, the release and transfer of fission prod-
bine trip at
ucts is possible to be relevant to the COR mesh, due to the conju- 0 s.
gation of the COR package with the CVH package and the RN - MSIVs close
package. at 5 s.

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N. Zhao, Y. Chen, W. Ma et al. Annals of Nuclear Energy 160 (2021) 108373

line isolation valves closes within 5 s. The RCPs would coast down
in 60 s.

3.2. Simulation matrix

Two accident scenarios are simulated by the same MELCOR

models with three different COR nodal schemes, i.e., coarse mesh,
medium mesh, and fine mesh. The MELCOR version 2.2 is used in
all simulations on the platform of Windows 10. The simulation
matrix is listed in Table 2 with a specific identifier for each case.
For the post-simulation analysis, the widely applied software
such as SNAP, MATLAB and EXCEL are employed for the data
extraction and processing.
The comparative simulations are performed from Scram to the
points in time of 8 h and 10 h for the LBLOCA and SBLOCA scenar-
ios, respectively. It should be noted that the nodal scheme has a
significant influence on the CPU time of calculation. For instance,
it takes around 2.5 h, 5 h and 16 h to finish the calculation of the
LBLOCA cases with coarse mesh, medium mesh and fine mesh, sep-
arately. This means the CPU time for the case with fine mesh is 2 Fig. 5. RPV pressure in the first 40 s.
times of that with medium mesh, and 7 times of that with fine
mesh. Hence, the fine nodalization of the COR significantly slows
Table 3
down the simulation.
LBLOCA progression timing.

Event LBLOCA 6 LBLOCA 10 LBLOCA 15

4. Results and discussions
Scram 0 0 0
TAF uncovered 8s 8s 8s
4.1. In-vessel accident progression Gap release 9s 8s 7s
ACC activated 11 s 10 s 11 s
4.1.1. LBLOCA scenario ACC empty 36 s 38 s 36 s
BAF uncovered 1536 s 1446 s 1892 s
The extreme break size in the LBLOCA cases would lead to a
RPV boil-off 5405 s 5145 s 6995 s
very fast reduction of RPV pressure, as shown in Fig. 5. The RPV Full core damage 6615 s 6525 s 6080 s
pressure drops from the operating pressure to the level of contain- RPV failure 8835 s 8432 s 8796 s
ment pressure well before 40 s. Simultaneously, massive water MVSS activated 12485 s 12444 s 11846 s
inventory in primary circuit would be discharged into the contain-
ment through the breaks of the cold leg. The entire active core
becomes fully uncovered shortly, so that the accident and core the release of massive amounts of steam and hydrogen into the
relocation would progress very quickly in the LBLOCA cases. containment increases containment pressure and temperature.
Table 3 lists the event sequence of the LBLOCA progression from The MVSS is activated passively when the containment pressure
the MELCOR simulation using the three meshes chosen. In all cases, reaches 5.14 bar at 3.29 ~ 3.47 h, which is slightly above the con-
the reactor is scrammed at 0 s. The water level in the RPV reaches tainment design pressure.
to top of active fuel (TAF) at around 8 s. The decay heat from the Table 3 shows that the timing of the events differs among the
uncovered core would heat up the components in the active core three cases after the uncovery of the BAF, but the differences of
and lead to the failure of the cladding. In MELCOR simulations
the gap release is a representative signal of the failure of cladding
integrity when the cladding temperature in a cell reaches 1173 K.
Following the gap release, noble gas and the gaseous radionuclides
in the fuel gaps are released into the RPV and the containment. Due
to the depressurization through the pipe breaks, the low RPV pres-
sure activates the accumulator injection at 11 s, though the accu-
mulator injection cannot offset the decrease of RPV water levels
in the LBLOCA cases. The water level is predicted to drop below
the bottom of active fuel (BAF) at 25 ~ 31 min, and the water inven-
tory in the vessel is depleted at 1.5 h. Without coolant in the vessel,
a core melt-down occurs. Around 90% of the core gets relocated at
1.68 ~ 1.81 h. The core melt (debris) falls into the lower head, and
due to the thermal–mechanical loads on the lower head, the vessel
fails at 2.34 ~ 2.45 h. In addition to the in-vessel core degradation,

Table 2
Simulation matrix and case identifier.

ScenarioMesh LBLOCA SBLOCA

Coarse mesh: 6 rings  20 levels LBLOCA-6 SBLOCA-6
Medium mesh: 10 rings  43 levels LBLOCA-10 SBLOCA-10
Fine mesh: 15 rings  67 levels LBLOCA-15 SBLOCA-15
Fig. 6. Water inventory in the primary circuits.

5
N. Zhao, Y. Chen, W. Ma et al.
the most important events such as vessel failure and containment
venting are within 5%. Fig. 6 illustrates the variations of the in-
vessel coolant inventory, which appears slightly different among
the three cases after the active core is uncovered.
Fig. 7 illustrates the chronological snapshots of the core mate-
rial temperature distribution, where five observation points are
taken at the time of (a) gap release; (b) 5% core relocation; (c)
50% core relocation; (d) 85% core relocation; and (e) full core dam-
age. The gap release represents the beginning of the core reloca-
tion, while 5%, 50% and 85% core relocation represent 5%, 50%
and 85% of the core materials collapsed into the lower plenum.
The color of each cell in Fig. 7 represents the maximum temper-
ature of core components in the cell. Three cases are similar in the
early stage of the core relocation (snapshots (a)~(b) in Fig. 6). How-
ever, in the later stage (snapshots (c)~(e) in Fig. 7), the temperature
profiles differ among the three cases. For the LBLOCA-6 case, the
maximum temperature of the core melt is around 2500 K, and
the temperatures of most cells are below 2000 K. In the LBLOCA-
10 case, the central part of debris reaches 3000 K, and the temper-
atures in the surrounding cells are between 2000 K and 2500 K. In
the LBLOCA-15 case, most of cells reach above 3000 K. This implies
that the coarse mesh may result in less heat remaining in the core
melt, and relatively more heat transfer from the core melt to the
Fig. 7. Core/corium configurations and temperatures during LBLOCA at (a) gap release, (b) 5% core relocation, (c) 50% core relocation, (d) 85% core relocation, and (e) full core
relocation.
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Annals of Nuclear Energy 160 (2021) 108373
surrounding coolant and heat structures. From the simulation
results, the least remaining heat of 128 GJ in the core melt is pre-
dicted in the LBLOCA-6 case, compared with 130 GJ and 163 GJ in
LBLOCA-10 and LBLOCA-15 case.
Fig. 8 shows the core material masses which remain in the core
region as the variation of time. The elapsed times of 5%~50% core
relocations are almost the same for the three cases. The major dif-
ference occurs at 85% core relocation. The elapsed times from gap
release to full core damage are 1.84 h, 1.81 h and 1.69 h in the core
with coarse, medium, and fine meshes separately. This implies that
the fine mesh tends to predict a shorter time window from 50%
core relocation to full core damage.
4.1.2. SBLOCA scenario
Compared with the LBLOCA, the SBLOCA has a much smaller
break size, which slows down the depressurization of primary sys-
tem and delays the activation of accumulator injection. Fig. 9
shows the history of the vessel pressure in the MELCOR simula-
tions of the SBLOCA using the three nodal cases. The accumulator
injection is activated at around 0.6 h, resulting in pressure fluctu-
ations: pressure spike occurs due to evaporation of injected cool-
ant, which in turn reduces the injection rate from the
accumulators. When the injection cannot compensate the coolant
N. Zhao, Y. Chen, W. Ma et al. Annals of Nuclear Energy 160 (2021) 108373

Fig. 8. Core damage state vs. time in LBLOCA.

Fig. 10. RPV water levels in SBLOCA cases.

Table 4
SBLOCA progression timing.

Event SBLOCA-6 SBLOCA-10 SBLOCA-15

Scram 0s 0s 0s
TAF uncovered 1006 s=16.7 min 1015 s=16.9 min 1023 s=17.1 min
Gap release 1754 s=29.2 min 1809 s=30.2 min 1842 s=30.7 min
ACC activated 2145 s=35.8 min 2195 s=36.6 min 2230 s=37.2 min
ACC empty 2772 s=46.2 min 15363 s=4.27 h 14305 s=3.97 h
BAF uncovered 13355 s=3.71 h 17925 s=4.98 h 20625 s=5.73 h
RPV boil-off 19530 s=5.43 h 20410 s=5.67 h 21330 s=5.93 h
Full core damage 21140 s=5.87 h 19255 s=5.35 h 18430 s=5.12 h
RPV failure 24487 s=6.80 h 21964 s=6.10 h 21178 s=5.88 h

Fig. 9. RPV pressure in SBLOCA cases.
loss, another cycle of depressurization and injection would con-
tinue. With the accumulator injection, the RPV pressure drops
down with fluctuations, and relatively the RPV water level with
fluctuations is maintained above the bottom of active fuel. The
variations in RPV pressure and water level are similar after the
depletion of accumulator inventory (see Fig. 10).
The sequence of events in SBLOCA scenarios from the MELCOR
simulation using the three different meshes are listed in Table 4.
The water level in the RPV drops below the TAF in around
17 min. The time differences of ACC activation are less than
100 s between the three cases, while the time differences of accu-
mulator injection depletion are up to an hour.
Similar to the LBLOCA cases, the COR meshes also affect the pre-
dictions of the temperature profiles of the corium in the SBLOCA
scenario. The maximum temperatures of the COR cells are plotted
in Fig. 11 for the five selected moments as above, i.e., at the point in
times of (a) gap release; (b) 5% core relocation; (c) 50% core reloca-
tion; (d) 85% core relocation; and (e) full core damage. The maxi-
mum temperature at the time of full core damage is below
2500 K in the SBLOCA-6 case, but in other two cases, the maximum
temperatures of most COR cells approach 3000 K. It implies that
7
the finer COR meshes in the COR package tends to predict less heat
transfer from the COR to other packages, leading to more thermal
energy remained in the COR cells. Comparing with LBLOCA cases,
the SBLOCA case experiences a slower progression of core reloca-
tion. The total heat transfers from COR to CVH are 1173 GJ, 1087
GJ and 1068 GJ in SBLOCA-6, SBLOCA-10, and SBLOCA-15 case sep-
arately. Similar to the LBLOCA cases, the finer mesh SBLOCA case
presents more remaining heat in core melt compared to the other
two cases, as well as higher temperature profiles in the late stage
(50% core relocation to full core damage).
From the illustration of Fig. 12, one can see the time sequences
in the three meshing cases are the same in the early stage of core
relocation (0% to 5% core relocation), but then become different in
the later stages (50% core relocation to full core damage). The full
core damage occurs at 5.87 h in the SBLOCA-6 case, but at 5.35 h
and 5.12 h in the SBLOCA-10 and SBLOCA-15 cases, respectively.
This observation also confirms that the finer COR meshes would
predict less heat transfer from COR to CVH, leading to a shorter
time window from 50% core relocation to full core damage.
4.2. Hydrogen generation and containment pressure
4.2.1. LBLOCA scenario
In MELCOR, the cladding oxidation is calculated by Urbanic-
Heidrich correlation (Urbanic and Heidrick, 1978), in which the
oxidation rate is the function of cladding surface area and temper-
ature of cladding components. When the cladding temperature
exceeds 1873 K, the cladding oxidation rate would increase dra-
matically. This is why the cumulative hydrogen mass from clad-
ding oxidation, as shown in Fig. 13, displays a sharp increase
N. Zhao, Y. Chen, W. Ma et al. Annals of Nuclear Energy 160 (2021) 108373

Fig. 11. Core corium configuration and temperature during SBLOCA at (a) gap release, (b) 5% core relocation, (c) 50% core relocation, (d) 85% core relocation, and (e) full core
relocation.

Fig. 12. Core damage state vs. time in SBLOCA. Fig. 13. Hydrogen mass produced from cladding oxidation in LBLOCA.

after the peak cladding temperature (PCT) reaches 1873 K. After metallic corium. In the LBLOCA-6 case, the total hydrogen mass
the relocation of the full core, the cladding oxidation rate drops from the oxidation of the core is 315 kg, while it is 193 kg and
to zero due to deletion of steam and/or no contact of steam with 192 kg for LBLOCA-10 and LBLOCA-15, respectively. It seems that

8
N. Zhao, Y. Chen, W. Ma et al.
the simulation with the coarse mesh predicts more hydrogen gen-
eration during the core relocation.
Except the cumulative hydrogen mass from the cladding oxida-
tion in the core, the impacts of COR mesh on hydrogen generation
can be presented in detail by comparing the proportion of oxidized
cladding in the COR cells of active core region during core melting.
As in Fig. 14, the entire active core is divided into Regions 1 ~ 4, in
which each region covers one fourth of initial cladding mass in the
active core. The oxidized cladding percentages is given as the ratio
of oxidized cladding mass to the initial cladding mass. The hydro-
gen generation in each cell is proportional to the oxidized cladding
mass.
Fig. 15 display the color scale maps of oxidized cladding propor-
tions in the COR cells in the LBLOCA cases. The color scale in Region
3 and Region 4 of coarse mesh case seems darker than in other two
cases. It implies that the proportion of cladding oxidation in the
COR cells of Region 3 and Region 4 is lower in LBLOCA-10 and
LBLOCA-15 scenarios. The reason seems to be that in the finer
mesh it is easier to form the flow blockages in the COR cells, which
blocks the steam flow in the channels and reduces the cladding
oxidation in the upstream COR cells, and thus produces less hydro-
gen generation in the lower core region.
The generated hydrogen in the RPV is mixed with steam and
then released from the primary circuits through the break to the
containment. The release of steam and hydrogen not only increases
the containment pressure, but also results in the potential risk of
hydrogen combustion. Once the increasing containment pressure
exceeds the burst-through criterion of MVSS rupture disc
(5.14 bar), the filtered containment venting function through MVSS
will be activated. The burst of the rupture disc is predicted to occur
at 3.47 h, 3.46 h and 3.29 h for the corresponding meshes of
LBLOCA-6, LBLOCA-10 and LBLOCA-15. As shown in Fig. 16, the
trends of the containment pressure are compared for the three
cases. Similarly, the containment pressure experiences two stages
of increases before the activation of MVSS. The release of hydrogen
and steam results in the first stage of containment pressure
increase before the RPV failure. After the RPV failure, the corium
falls into the reactor cavity and the molten core concrete interac-
tions (MCCI) are responsible for the second stage of pressure
increase.
Fig. 14. Four regions in the active core.
9
Annals of Nuclear Energy 160 (2021) 108373
After the activation of containment venting, the containment
atmosphere including (hydrogen) is connected to the MVSS. Once
the pressure in the MVSS tank exceeds 1.2 bar, the atmosphere
in the MVSS tank is open for gradual discharge into the environ-
ment through the blowoff pipeline. The MVSS is designed to man-
age potential hydrogen risk by installing such a MVSS tank that has
a gas volume initially filled with nitrogen and a water pool heated
to slightly under saturate temperature as to promote steam con-
centration. These conditions are valid to prevent hydrogen com-
bustion in the MVSS. The variations of the hydrogen
concentrations in different compartments of the containment are
illustrated in Figs. 17–19 for the three cases of LBLOCA-6,
LBLOCA-10 and LBLOCA-15, separately. The peak hydrogen con-
centrations are below 6% and diluted rapidly to be less than 3%
due to the large volume of the containment. According to the Sha-
piro diagram (Zabetakis, 1965) in Fig. 20 for the hydrogen flamma-
bility for the hydrogen-air–steam mixtures in the containment,
there is no risk of hydrogen combustion for all the three cases of
simulation.
4.2.2. SBLOCA scenario
In SBLOCA cases, the slower depressurization of RCS postpones
the accumulator injection to the time window during core melting.
The accumulator injection maintains the RPV water level above the
bottom of active core responding to the fluctuation of RPV pressure
for few hours. Different from the LBLOCA cases, the hydrogen gen-
eration starts before the initiation of accumulator injection and the
hydrogen mass generated from cladding oxidation sharply
increases in the first 1 h. However, the hydrogen generation is
paused during the accumulator injection, and the continuous
water supply maintains the cladding temperature below the clad-
ding oxidation criterion for few hours. After the depletion of accu-
mulator injection, the masses of hydrogen released from cladding
oxidation continue to increase and reach 328 kg, 234 kg and
212 kg in SBLOCA cases (as shown in Fig. 21) after the damage of
the full core. Similar to the LBLOCA cases, the coarse mesh tends
to predict more hydrogen mass generated from cladding oxidation
also in the SBLOCA cases. Notably, the SBLOCA scenario produces
more hydrogen than the LBLOCA scenario, which was also found
N. Zhao, Y. Chen, W. Ma et al. Annals of Nuclear Energy 160 (2021) 108373

Fig. 15. Percentages of cladding oxidation in the core cells at 8 h in the LBLOCA cases.

Fig. 16. Containment pressure in LBLOCA. Fig. 18. Hydrogen concentrations in different control volumes (LBLOCA-10).

Fig. 17. Hydrogen concentrations in different control volumes (LBLOCA-6). Fig. 19. Hydrogen concentrations in different control volumes (LBLOCA-15).

10
N. Zhao, Y. Chen, W. Ma et al.
Fig. 20. Shapiro diagram for hydrogen-air–steam mixtures in the containment
(LBLOCA).
Fig. 21. Hydrogen mass produced from cladding oxidation in SBLOCA.
in other studies (Lopez-Alonso et al., 2017; Wang and Cao, 2017;
Liu et al., 2018).
The color-scale maps in Fig. 22 represent the proportions of
cladding oxidation in COR cells in SBLOCA cases. From the subplots,
the proportions of cladding oxidation in few COR cells reach up to
80% in the coarse mesh (Fig. 22a for SBLOCA-6), and the averaged
proportions are 35.3%, 25.2% and 22.8% in the coarse (Fig. 22a),
medium (Fig. 22b) and fine (Fig. 22c) meshes, separately. It can
be seen that the coarse mesh predicts a higher proportion of clad-
Fig. 22. Percentages at of cladding percentages at 10 h in SBLOCA cases.
11
Annals of Nuclear Energy 160 (2021) 108373
ding oxidation in Region 4 (cf. Fig. 14) than the other two meshes.
Similar profiles of cladding oxidation are overserved in the LBLOCA
cases. Compared to SBLOCA-6, the SBLOCA-10 and SBLOCA-15
cases predict that larger portions of the cells in the lower region
of the active core are blocked, resulting in steam starvation condi-
tions in the degraded core. This could be the reason why the hydro-
gen production amounts predicted in the medium and fine meshes
are less than that in the coarse mesh.
Fig. 23 shows the containment pressurization processes pre-
dicted in three SBLOCA cases due to massive release of hydrogen
and steam mixture from the RPV. In the SBLOCA-6 case, a creep
rupture on the surge line of the pressurizer occurs at around
4.82 h, and results in a jump of the containment pressure and
accelerates the activation of passive containment venting. Before
that, the containment pressures have only slight differences among
the three cases.
As in the LBLOCA cases, the hydrogen mixed with the steam and
air is discharged from the containment through the MVSS after
activation of the MVSS. The variations of the hydrogen concentra-
tions in different compartments of the containment are illustrated
in Figs. 24–26 for the three cases of SBLOCA-6, SBLOCA-10 and
SBLOCA-15, separately. Similar to the cases of LBLOCA, there is
no risk of hydrogen combustion for the three cases of simulation
of SBLOCA (cf. Fig. 27).
4.3. Source term and radioactive release
MELCOR is considered as a source term code in the first place,
which means that an important capability of the code is to calcu-
late the behavior and transport of fission products released in the
RCS and the containment during a severe accident. Since the inven-
tory of fission products is estimated by MELCOR through a scaling
factor of the ORIGIN calculation results of a Westinghouse PWR at
the end of fuel cycle (Ostmeyer, 1985), the initial masses of fission
products (cf. Table 5) are independent of the nodalization. How-
ever, the release of fission products in the core is connected with
the core degradation, and therefore the source term in the contain-
ment and the release of radioactive fission products through the
MVSS may be affected by the COR nodalization.
The RN Package of MELCOR is used to model the behavior of fis-
sion products in the RCS and the containment, where the fission
products are described by classes which are groups of elements
that have similar chemical properties. The classes are referred to
by representative elements (e.g., Xe for noble gases, Cs for alkali
metals, I for halogens, Ba for alkaline earths, Te for chalcogens,
Mo for early transition metals). In the present study, the attention
N. Zhao, Y. Chen, W. Ma et al. Annals of Nuclear Energy 160 (2021) 108373

Fig. 23. Containment pressure in SBLOCA cases. Fig. 25. Hydrogen concentrations in different control volumes (SBLOCA-10).

Fig. 26. Hydrogen concentrations in different control volumes (SBLOCA-15).

Fig. 24. Hydrogen concentrations in different control volumes (SBLOCA-6).

is paid to six classes of radioactive fission products of Xe, I, Cs, Ba,

Te and Mo, since they are the main contributors to the source term.
In particular, it is interesting to examine the influence of the COR
nodalization on the total release of the radioactive fission products
from the fuel, the radioactive release to the containment at the
time activating the MVSS. It should be noted that in reality the fis-
sion products may react with each other and water/steam, forming
compounds after their release - e.g., the element I will react with Cs
to form the compound CsI, and the Cs in excess will be in the for-
mat of CsOH. However, only the elements instead of compounds
are tracked here to facilitate comparison.

4.3.1. LBLOCA scenario

Fig. 28 presents the accumulative release of the six classes of
radioactive fission products (Xe, Cs, Ba, Te, Mo and I) from the fuel
and debris during the LBLOCA scenario. It is found that an earlier
release occurs in the case of fine mesh, but the difference in time
of initial release is only a few seconds. Thus, it can be concluded
that the COR nodalization has little impact on the release of Fig. 27. Shapiro diagram for hydrogen-air–steam mixtures in the containment
radioactive fission products at the beginning of the core degrada- (SBLOCA).

12
N. Zhao, Y. Chen, W. Ma et al. Annals of Nuclear Energy 160 (2021) 108373

Table 5
Inventory of some fission products.

Class name Noble gases (Xe) Alkali metals (Cs) Halogens (I) Alkali earths (Ba) Chalcogens (Te) Early transition metals (Mo)
Initial mass (kg) 316.2 161.9 13.4 78.8 27.7 230.1

Fig. 28. Release of radioactive fission products from the fuel in LBLOCA.

tion. Moreover, further release of fission products after 2.5 h is neg-
ligible for all the three cases, and the major release from the fuel
and debris takes place in the first hour. Fig. 28 also indicates that
the final release of Xe, Cs, I and Te from the fuel and debris is insen-
sitive to core nodalization, while the release of Ba and Mo are
slightly affected by nodal schemes.
Table 6 lists the accumulative mass of each class of radioactive
fission products which reach the containment at 8 h when the cal-
culation is terminated, and the fraction within the total inventory
(cf. Table 5). It is interesting to find that the nodalization has no
effect on the total release of radioactive fission products to the con-
tainment (in-containment source term), although there are differ-
ences in release among classes.
4.3.2. SBLOCA scenario
Fig. 29 is the accumulative release of the six classes of radioac-
tive fission products (Xe, Cs, Ba, Te, Mo and I) from the fuel and
debris during the SBLOCA scenario. It is found that the case of fine

Table 6
Radioactive release to the containment at 8 h in LBLOCA.

Classes LBLOCA-6 LBLOCA-10 LBLOCA-15

Mass (kg) Fraction Mass (kg) Fraction Mass (kg) Fraction
Xe 315.8 99.9% 315.7 99.6% 315.8 99.7%
Cs 100.3 61.5% 95.9 59.2% 87.3 53.8%
Ba 8.1 10.3% 9.5 12.0% 11.6 14.7%
Te 16.7 60.2% 16.6 60.1% 14.4 52.2%
Mo 15.5 6.7% 19.8 8.6% 30.2 13.1%
I 8.3 61.7% 8.0 59.9% 7.3 54.8%
Total 464.7 56.1% 465.5 56.2% 466.6 56.3%

13
N. Zhao, Y. Chen, W. Ma et al. Annals of Nuclear Energy 160 (2021) 108373

Fig. 29. Release of radioactive fission products from the fuel in SBLOCA.

mesh starts the release of fission products 15 and 25 s earlier than
the cases medium mesh and coarse mesh, respectively. Due to the
negligible differences in the times, it remains the same as in
LBLOCA that that the COR nodalization has little impact on the ini-
tial release of radioactive fission products in SBLOCA. The release
period of fission products from the fuel and debris is much longer
in SBLOCA than in SBLOCA. Moreover, the release histories of fis-
sion products in the cases of medium mesh and fine mesh are
almost identical (see Fig. 29b and c), but distinct from the case of
coarse mesh. This may be due to the occurrence of surge line fail-
ure in the case of coarse mesh. Nevertheless, the nodalization has
little effect on the total release of radioactive fission products to
the containment (Table 7).
5. Conclusions
To investigate the effects of the COR nodalization on MELCOR
modelling of severe accident scenarios in a pressurized water reac-
tor (PWR), two representative loss of coolant accident (LOCA) sce-
narios without safety injection, namely LBLOCA and SBLOCA, are
simulated with three different COR nodal schemes (coarse, med-
ium, and fine), separately. The LBLOCA is initiated by a double-
ended guillotine break on one of the cold legs and the SBLOCA is
initiated by stuck opening of three PORVs on the pressurizer.
The simulation results show that in both scenarios the COR nodal
schemes have little impact on the thermal–hydraulic behavior (e.g.,
the evolution of the RPV pressure and the water level in the primary

Table 7
Radioactive release to the containment at 10 h in SBLOCA.

Classes SBLOCA-6 SBLOCA-10 SBLOCA-15

Mass (kg) Fraction Mass (kg) Fraction Mass (kg) Fraction
Xe 316.1 100% 314.3 99.4% 316.2 100%
Cs 86.7 53.5% 105.0 64.9% 99.6 61.5%
Ba 33.7 42.7% 15.3 19.4% 15.9 20.1%
Te 18.6 67.1% 17.8 64.2% 17.3 62.4%
Mo 49.7 21.6% 30.3 13.2% 23.1 10.1%
I 8.8 65.7% 8.9 66.7% 8.6 64.2%
Total 513.6 62.0% 491.6 59.4% 480.7 58.1%

14
N. Zhao, Y. Chen, W. Ma et al.
circuits) prior to core degradation but appear to affect core reloca-
tion and accident progression afterwards. With the quantitative
data analysis, the following concluding remarks can be made:
 In both LBLOCA and SBLOCA, the core relocation is slower in the
simulation using the coarse mesh of the COR package, due to
lower temperature of the core. This indicates that the coarse
mesh predicts more heat transfer from the COR package to
other MELCOR packages, and therefore relatively less energy
remains in the core cells. The slower core relocation and the
delay in vessel failure imply that the coarse mesh may not be
conservative in the severe accident risk assessment.
 The fine mesh tends to predict less mass of hydrogen generated
from cladding oxidation during core relocation, probably due to
formation of flow blockages in the COR cells of lower core
region, and a resulting starvation condition. The difference of
hydrogen generation between the nodal schemes has little
influence on hydrogen concentration in the containment and
the risk of hydrogen combustion, thanks to the large contain-
ment volume in the PWR.
 The COR nodal schemes slightly affect the initial release of
radioactive fission products from the fuel and debris, and the
arrival of each class of radioactive fission products to the con-
tainment except for noble gases. However, the nodalization
has little effect on the total release of radioactive fission prod-
ucts to the containment (in-containment source term), in both
LBLOCA and SBLOCA scenarios.
Moreover, the simulation results indicate that the heat transfer
between the COR and CVH packages as well as the temperatures in
the core cells are sensitive to the selection of COR mesh. It is found
that the finer mesh tends to capture more details of the core mate-
rials distribution in the core region. The finer mesh is more conser-
vative for the simulations of severe accident scenarios in term of
core relocation and RPV failure. However, the finer mesh may be
not conservative in estimation of hydrogen generation in the core,
and computationally expensive in applications which need many
calculations. Further investigation is foreseen in connection with
sensitivity/uncertainty analysis as well as SAMG verification and
validation.
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Nan Zhao: Data curation, Writing - original draft, Visualization,
Investigation, Software, Validation. Yangli Chen: Writing - review
& editing. Weimin Ma: Conceptualization, Methodology, Software.
Sevostian Bechta: Supervision. Patrick Isaksson: Writing - review
& editing.
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing finan-
cial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared
to influence the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgement
The MELCOR code is developed and maintained by Sandia
National Laboratory for U.S. NRC. This study was made possible
by the support of Swedish Radiation Safety Authority (SSM). The
15
Annals of Nuclear Energy 160 (2021) 108373
authors are also grateful to the support of the scholarship awarded
by the China Scholarship Council (CSC).
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