ABSTRACT
The focus of research on containment transport behavior has been on providing the data and capability to calculate the various severe accident loads, the containment response, and the detailed behavior of fission products as aerosols. The United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission has recently developed a new Severe Accident Research Plan that has not yet been released. However, the draft report issued for comment divided the severe accident research program into two categories, near-term issues and longer-term issues. The near-term issues include direct containment heating and depressurization of the reactor coolant system, containment shell melt through, and hydrogen transport and combustion. Included within the longer-term program plans are in-vessel hydrogen generation, fuel coolant interactions, molten core/concrete interactions, and containment fission-product re-evolution chemistry. The chapter addresses the issue of fission product iodine behavior in containment. It also addresses the release and transport of fission products and aerosols.
