ICONE23-1610 Endurance test report of rubber sealing materials for the containment vessel

Abstract

In the event of a nuclear power plant accident such as a core meltdown and a cooling system failure, the containment contains radioactive materials released from the reactor pressure vessel to reduce the activity of the radioactive materials and the effects of radiation in the vicinity of the plant. Since high sealing performance and high pressure resistance are required of the containment, a silicone or EPDM rubber gasket with high heat and radiation resistance is used for the sealing of the sealing boundary of the containment. In recent years, it has been shown that a large amount of steam is released into the containment in the case of a severe accident. Consequently, radiation resistance at high temperature as well as steam resistance is required of the rubber gasket placed at the sealing boundary. However, the steam resistance of silicone rubber is not necessarily as good as that of EPDM rubber. Therefore, it is necessary to evaluate the sealing characteristics of rubber gaskets in such a degrading environment in a severe accident. O. Kato et al. [1] conducted a study on the degradation status of rubber gaskets and their application limits at high temperature. However, few studies have evaluated rubber gaskets in high-temperature radiation and steam environments. In this study, we degraded silicone rubber and EPDM rubber used for the containment in the high-temperature radiation and steam environments expected to occur in a severe accident and evaluated the useful life of the rubber as a sealing material by estimating the change in its performance as a sealing material from the change in permanent compressive strain in the rubber.