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Procedures and instrumentation for sodium boiling experiments in EBR-II

Technical Report ·
DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/7270371· OSTI ID:7270371
The development of instrumentation capable of detecting localized coolant boiling in a liquid metal cooled breeder reactor (LMFBR) has a high priority in fast reactor safety. The detection must be rapid enough to allow corrective action to be taken before significant damage occurs to the core. To develop and test a method of boiling detection, it is desirable to produce boiling in a reactor and thereby introduce a condition in the reactor the original design concepts were chosen to preclude. The proposed boiling experiments are designed to safely produce boiling in the subassembly of a fast reactor and provide the information to develop boiling detection instrumentation without core damage or safety compromise. The experiment consists of the operation of two separate subassemblies, first, a gamma heated boiling subassembly which produces non-typical but highly conservative boiling and then a fission heated subassembly which simulates a prototypical boiling event. The two boiling subassemblies are designed to operate in the instrumentation subassembly test facility (INSAT) of Experiment Breeder Reactor II (EBR-II).
Research Organization:
Washington Univ., Seattle (USA)
DOE Contract Number:
EY-76-S-05-3363
OSTI ID:
7270371
Report Number(s):
TID-27575
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English