Corium spreading and coolability

Characteristics of corium debris bed generated in large-scale fuel-coolant interaction experiments

“…Except for the particular case of L-29 (see Section 3.4), visual observation of the cake and comparison with debris from corium melt flows in dry conditions (Cognet et al, 2001) suggests that the cake formed essentially from melt which did not experience break up during fall through water rather than from coalescence of particles. This statement may find confirmation when comparing the histories of melt front descent through water as deduced from the centreline thermocouples, Fig.…”

Melt spreading code assessment, modifications, and application to the EPR core catcher design.

“…Following the benchmarking exercise against oxide simulant and metal melt spreading tests, the code was further exercised against tests conducted with reactor materials. As reported by Cognet et al 16 and Journeau et al, [17][18] several corium melt spreading tests were carried out at CEA with varying melt compositions and substrate materials in the VULCANO facility. Two corium tests were also conducted by Magallon and Tromm 19 as part of the FARO program, one of them under wet cavity conditions.…”

“…Isothermal tests (6 cases 2,10 ) 3. Flow and freezing tests (28 cases); i.e., core oxides (7 tests [16][17][18][19][20][21] ), core oxide -steel mixtures (4 tests [20][21] ), simulant oxides (12 tests [11][12][13][14][15] ), and steel alone (5 tests 9,[12][13] The category of flow and freezing tests include five cases in which water was present in the cavity. Spreading on concrete, ceramic, and steel substrates has been investigated.…”

“…These tests [16][17][18] involved spreading of high temperature core oxide melts that were generated using a specially designed plasma arc furnace. Once the melts had reached the desired initial condition, the furnace was tilted and the melt was poured and spread within instrumented test sections.…”

Benchmarking lava-flow models

“…For example, extensive experiments were performed in the field of nuclear energy research, modelling reactor failure and corium flow. Some of these experimental results are available as benchmark data sets (Greene et al 1988;Suzuki et al 1993;Fieg et al 1996;Cognet et al 2001;Piluso et al 2001;Journeau et al 2003) and are used to confirm that the physics implemented in the numerical simulations is sufficient. Finally, natural cases are the ultimate target of the numerical simulations as they contain all the factors at play.…”