Quantitative safety analysis of cryogenic liquid releases in a deep underground large scale installation

E.C. Marcoulaki, A. Venetsanos and I.A. Papazoglou

Reliability Engineering and System Safety, 2017, vol. 162, issue C, 51-63

Abstract: The present work considers the quantitative risk assessment of a heat insulated Tank designed to host over 65kt of cryogenic argon. A specially built detector grid will be submerged in the cryogenic medium to allow the detection of subatomic particles (neutrinos). The Tank and associated equipment for cooling, heating, pressurization and filtration, are located in appropriately constructed caverns 1400m underground. Previous work on this infrastructure focused on pressure control failures leading eventually to minor argon gas leaks (Marcoulaki et al., 2016 [7]). This work identifies possible initiators for direct loss of containment and release of liquid argon in the underground premises, discusses the proposed safety measures, and presents results for two release category types involving medium and major liquid argon spills. Assessment of consequences aims at identifying the risks of human casualties and/or collapse of the underground caverns. Detailed thermodynamic predictions and CFD dispersion simulations are performed to support the phenomenology analysis.

Keywords: Risk assessment; Cryogenic argon; Loss of containment; Deep underground process; CFD dispersion simulation; Neutrino detector (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0951832016301995
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:reensy:v:162:y:2017:i:c:p:51-63

DOI: 10.1016/j.ress.2017.01.016

Access Statistics for this article

Reliability Engineering and System Safety is currently edited by Carlos Guedes Soares

More articles in Reliability Engineering and System Safety from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().