Contribution to modeling of the reflooding of a severely damaged reactor core using PRELUDE experimental results
- Institut de Radioprotection et de Surete Nucleaire IRSN, Cadarache (France)
- Universite de Toulouse, INPT, UPS, IMFT Institut de Mecanique des Fluides de Toulouse, Allee Camille Soula, F-31400 Toulouse (France)
In case of accident at a nuclear power plant, water sources may not be available for a long period of time and the core heats up due to the residual power. The reflooding (injection of water into core) may be applied if the availability of safety injection is recovered during accident. If the injection becomes available only in the late phase of accident, water will enter a core configuration that will differ significantly from original rod-bundle geometry. Any attempt to inject water after significant core degradation can lead to further fragmentation of core material. The fragmentation of fuel rods may result in the formation of a 'debris bed'. The typical particle size in a debris bed might reach few millimeters (characteristic length-scale: 1 to 5 mm), i.e., a high permeability porous medium. The French 'Institut de Radioprotection et de Surete Nucleaire' is developing experimental programs (PEARL and PRELUDE) and simulation tools (ICARE-CATHARE and ASTEC) to study and optimize the severe accident management strategy and to assess the probabilities to stop the progress of in-vessel core degradation. It is shown that the quench front exhibits either a ID behaviour or a 2D one, depending on injection rate or bed characteristics. The PRELUDE experiment covers a rather large range of variation of parameters, for which the developed model appears to be quite predictive. (authors)
- Research Organization:
- American Nuclear Society, 555 North Kensington Avenue, La Grange Park, IL 60526 (United States)
- OSTI ID:
- 22107801
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: ICAPP '12: 2012 International Congress on Advances in Nuclear Power Plants, Chicago, IL (United States), 24-28 Jun 2012; Other Information: Country of input: France; 13 refs.; Related Information: In: Proceedings of the 2012 International Congress on Advances in Nuclear Power Plants - ICAPP '12| 2799 p.
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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Related Subjects
ACCIDENT MANAGEMENT
CONFIGURATION
FISSION PRODUCTS
FUEL ELEMENT CLUSTERS
FUEL RODS
HYPOTHETICAL ACCIDENTS
INJECTION
NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS
PARTICLE SIZE
PERMEABILITY
POROUS MATERIALS
REACTOR ACCIDENTS
REACTOR CORES
RESIDUAL POWER
SAFETY INJECTION
SIMULATION
WATER