Ablation of a Solid Material by High Temperature Liquid Jet Impingement: An Application to Corium Jet Impingement on a Sfr Core-Catcher

Author(s):  
Alexandre Lecoanet ◽  
Michel Gradeck ◽  
Xiaoyang Gaus-Liu ◽  
Thomas Cron ◽  
Beatrix Fluhrer ◽  
...  

Abstract This paper deals with ablation of a solid by a high temperature liquid jet. This phenomenon is a key issue to maintain the vessel integrity during the course of a nuclear reactor severe accident with melting of the core. Depending on the course of such an accident, high temperature corium jets might impinge and ablate the vessel material leading to its potential failure. Since Fukushima Daiichi accident, new mitigation measures are under study. As a designed safety feature of a future European SFR, bearing the purpose of quickly draining of the corium out of the core and protecting the reactor vessel against the attack of molten melt, the in-core corium is relocated via discharge tubes to an in-vessel core-catcher has been planned. The core-catcher design to withstand corium jet impingement demands the knowledge of very complex phenomena such as the dynamics of cavity formation and associated heat transfers. Even studied in the past, no complete data are available concerning the variation of jet parameters and solid structure materials. For a deep understanding of this phenomenon, new tests have been performed using both simulant and prototypical jet and core catcher materials. Part of these tests have been done at University of Lorraine using hot liquid water impinging on transparent ice block allowing for the visualizations of the cavity formation. Other tests have been performed in Karlsruhe Institute of Technology using liquid steel impinging on steel block.

Author(s):  
J. L. Rempe ◽  
D. L. Knudson ◽  
K. G. Condie ◽  
W. D. Swank ◽  
K. Y. Suh ◽  
...  

An enhanced in-vessel core catcher is being designed and evaluated as part of a joint United States (U.S.)–Korean International Nuclear Engineering Research Initiative (INERI) investigating methods to insure In-Vessel Retention (IVR) of core materials that may relocate under severe accident conditions in advanced reactors. To reduce cost and simplify manufacture and installation, this new core catcher design consists of several interlocking sections that are machined to fit together when inserted into the lower head. If needed, the core catcher can be manufactured with holes to accommodate lower head penetrations. Each section of the core catcher consists of two material layers with an option to add a third layer (if deemed necessary): a base material, which has the capability to support and contain the mass of core materials that may relocate during a severe accident; an insulating oxide coating material on top of the base material, which resists interactions with high-temperature core materials; and an optional coating on the bottom side of the base material to prevent any potential oxidation of the base material during the lifetime of the reactor. Initial evaluations suggest that a thermally-sprayed oxide material is the most promising candidate insulator coating for a core catcher. As part of the effort to develop an in-vessel core catcher design, a series of high temperature materials interaction tests were conducted for thermal sprayed coatings and base materials with properties deemed most promising. This paper reports results from these materials interactions tests and efforts to optimize parameters for applying the thermal spray coatings.


Author(s):  
Naoto Kasahara ◽  
Izumi Nakamura ◽  
Hideo Machida ◽  
Hitoshi Nakamura ◽  
Koji Okamoto

As the important lessons learned from the Fukushima-nuclear power plant accident, mitigation of failure consequences and prevention of catastrophic failure became essential against severe accident and excessive earthquake conditions. To improve mitigation measures and accident management, clarification of failure behaviors with locations is premise under design extension conditions such as severe accidents and earthquakes. Design extension conditions induce some different failure modes from design conditions. Furthermore, best estimation for these failure modes are required for preparing countermeasures and management. Therefore, this study focused on identification of failure modes under design extension conditions. To observe ultimate failure behaviors of structures under extreme loadings, new experimental techniques were adopted with simulation materials such as lead and lead-antimony alloy, which has very small yield stress. Postulated failure modes of main components under design extension conditions were investigated according three categories of loading modes. The first loading mode is high temperature and internal pressure. Under this mode, ductile fracture and local failure were investigated. At the structural discontinuities, local failure may become dominant. The second is high temperature and external pressure loading mode. Buckling and fracture were investigated. Buckling occurs however hardly break without additional loads or constraints. The last loading is excessive earthquake. Ratchet deformation, collapse, and fatigue were investigated. Among them, low-cycle fatigue is dominant.


2006 ◽  
Vol 49 (17-18) ◽  
pp. 2877-2888 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aloke Kumar Mozumder ◽  
Masanori Monde ◽  
Peter Lloyd Woodfield ◽  
Md. Ashraful Islam

Author(s):  
Mengwei Zhang ◽  
Bin Zhang ◽  
Jianqiang Shan

Nuclear reactor severe accidents can lead to the release of a large amount of radioactive material and cause immense disaster to the environment. Since the Fukushima nuclear accident in Japan, the severe accident research has drawn worldwide attention. Based on the one-dimensional heat conduction model, a DEBRIS-HT program for analyzing the heat transfer characteristics of a debris bed after a severe accident of a sodium-cooled fast reactor was developed. The basic idea of the DEBRIS-HT program is to simplify the complex energy transfer process in the debris bed to a simple one-dimensional heat transfer problem by solving the equivalent thermal conductivity in different situations. In this paper, the DEBRIS-HT program code is prepared by using the existing model and compared with the experimental results. The results show that the DEBRIS-HT program can correctly predict the heat transfer process in the fragment bed. In addition, the heat transfer characteristics analysis program is also used to model the core catcher of the China fast reactor. Firstly, the dryout heat flux when all of molten core dropped on the core catcher was calculated, which was compared with the result of Lipinski’s zero dimensional model, and the error between two values is only 11.2%. Then, the temperature distribution was calculated with the heat power of 15MW.


Author(s):  
Tomohisa Kurita ◽  
Mitsuo Komuro ◽  
Ryo Suzuki ◽  
Masato Yamada ◽  
Mika Tahara ◽  
...  

It is necessary to stabilize high temperature molten core in a severe accident for long time without electrical power. The core-catcher is to be installed at the bottom of the lower drywell in order to settle the molten core flowing down from a reactor vessel. Toshiba’s core-catcher system consists of a round basin made up of inclined cooling channels to get natural circulation of the flooding water. So it can cover all pedestal floor and can work in passive manner. We have been confirming an applicability of the core-catcher to actual plants. We have conducted full scaled tests with a unique cooling channel which has inclined rectangular flow section and changing the section area along flow direction in several conditions to evaluate the influence of the parameters on the natural circulation and heat removal capability. The test results showed good heat removal performance with nucleate boiling. However, we should consider a transformation of the cooling channel, for example, by the falling corium. So we calculate the assumed transformation of the cooling channel and conduct natural circulation tests with obstruction in the cooling channel. We confirm that natural circulation flow is stably continues and the cooling channel can remove prescribed heat, even if a flow area have got narrow locally.


1991 ◽  
Vol 132 (2) ◽  
pp. 171-186 ◽  
Author(s):  
K. Sato ◽  
A. Furutani ◽  
M. Saito ◽  
M. Isozaki ◽  
K. Suganuma ◽  
...  

Author(s):  
Liancheng Guo ◽  
Andrei Rineiski

To avoid settling of molten materials directly on the vessel wall in severe accident sequences, the implementation of a ‘core catcher’ device in the lower plenum of sodium fast reactor designs is considered. The device is to collect, retain and cool the debris, created when the corium falls down and accumulates in the core catcher, while interacting with surrounding coolant. This Fuel-Coolant Interaction (FCI) leads to a potentially energetic heat and mass transfer process which may threaten the vessel integrity. For simulations of severe accidents, including FCI, the SIMMER code family is employed at KIT. SIMMER-III and SIMMER-IV are advanced tools for the core disruptive accidents (CDA) analysis of liquid-metal fast reactors (LMFRs) and other GEN-IV systems. They are 2D/3D multi-velocity-field, multiphase, multicomponent, Eulerian, fluid dynamics codes coupled with a fuel-pin model and a space- and energy-dependent neutron kinetics model. However, the experience of SIMMER application to simulation of corium relocation and related FCI is limited. It should be mentioned that the SIMMER code was not firstly developed for the FCI simulation. However, the related models show its basic capability in such complicate multiphase phenomena. The objective of the study was to preliminarily apply this code in a large-scale simulation. An in-vessel model based on European Sodium Fast Reactor (ESFR) was established and calculated by the SIMMER code. In addition, a sensitivity analysis on some modeling parameters is also conducted to examine their impacts. The characteristics of the debris in the core catcher region, such as debris mass and composition are compared. Besides that, the pressure history in this region, the mass of generated sodium vapor and average temperature of liquid sodium, which can be considered as FCI quantitative parameters, are also discussed. It is expected that the present study can provide some numerical experience of the SIMMER code in plant-scale corium relocation and related FCI simulation.


2009 ◽  
Vol 52 (5-6) ◽  
pp. 1094-1104 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Gradeck ◽  
A. Kouachi ◽  
M. Lebouché ◽  
F. Volle ◽  
D. Maillet ◽  
...  

Author(s):  
Tomohisa Kurita ◽  
Toshimi Tobimatsu ◽  
Mika Tahara ◽  
Masato Yamada ◽  
Yoshihiro Kojima

A mitigation system which can keep core melt stable after a severe accident is necessary to a next generation BWR design. Toshiba has been developing a compact core catcher to be placed at the lower drywell in the containment vessel. The cooling water for the core catcher is supplied from the passive flooder and PCCS drain line. After the core catcher is flooded, the molten core would be cooled by both overflooding water and inclined cooling channels, in which water is boiling and natural circulation is established. So the core catcher can operate in passive manner and has no active component inside the containment. This paper summarizes flow dynamics and heat removal capability in an inclined cooling channel of core catcher when cooling water flows by the natural circulation.


1990 ◽  
Vol 121 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-23 ◽  
Author(s):  
M Saito ◽  
K Sato ◽  
A Furutani ◽  
M Isozaki ◽  
S Imahori ◽  
...  

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