Study of the Underground Placement of a Reinforced Concrete Containment Building

Abstract

Nowadays, the safety of nuclear power plants is of increasing interest and importance. The main reasons for increased safety concerns are the recent major nuclear accident in Fukushima in 2011 and the overall tendency of environment protection. One of the possible ways of increasing the safety of nuclear power plants is the underground placement of all potentially dangerous systems under ground as the overlying soil or rock layer would act as a "earth" containment which would reduce the probability of ground level release following primary and secondary containment failure. Moreover, partial or total underground placement of nuclear power plant would reduce its visibility, and thus, public concerns would also be reduced. However, many design, operational, and economic disadvantages are linked with the underground placement of nuclear power plants. The aim of this paper is to provide state-of-the-art review of existing underground nuclear reactors, conceptual designs of underground nuclear reactors, and related literature, which can later be used for the design of a underground reinforced concrete containment building.