Insight into steam explosions with corium melts in KROTOS

Huhtiniemi, I.; Magallon, D.

doi:10.1016/s0029-5493(00)00319-8

Cited by 100 publications

(37 citation statements)

References 5 publications

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“…Note that all of our experiments are self-triggered, whereas, in some other configurations, a gas trigger [3] or a shock wave [15] are applied to destabilize the vapor layer.…”

Section: -2 Formation Of Microbeadsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Under some conditions the vapor layer separating the two liquids becomes unstable and a more violent interaction takes place. This phenomenon is known as a thermal or vapor explosion and is relevant to many natural and practical fields, including fuel coolant interaction in nuclear power plants [1][2][3][4][5][6][7] and contact between ejected lava with sea water or ice [8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15]. Herein we model such interactions with the impact of a molten metal droplet falling onto a water pool, where the metal temperature is far above the boiling temperature of water.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Formation of microbeads during vapor explosions of Field's metal in water

Kouraytem

Thoroddsen

2016

Phys. Rev. E

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We use high-speed video imaging to investigate vapor explosions during the impact of a molten Field's metal drop onto a pool of water. These explosions occur for temperatures above the Leidenfrost temperature and are observed to occur in up to three stages as the metal temperature is increased, with each explosion being more powerful that the preceding one. The Field's metal drop breaks up into numerous microbeads with an exponential size distribution, in contrast to tin droplets where the vapor explosion deforms the metal to form porous solid structures. We compare the characteristic bead size to the wavelength of the fastest growing mode of the Rayleigh-Taylor instability.

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“…Note that all of our experiments are self-triggered, whereas, in some other configurations, a gas trigger [3] or a shock wave [15] are applied to destabilize the vapor layer.…”

Section: -2 Formation Of Microbeadsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Formation of microbeads during vapor explosions of Field's metal in water

Kouraytem

Thoroddsen

2016

Phys. Rev. E

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“…14,15) For the Al 2 O 3 tests, the average integral void fraction varied from 1.0 to 2.6% during this premixing phase. In general, these values are smaller than 4% measured in a narrow test section.…”

Section: Discussion On the Suppression Of A Vapor Explosionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Suppression Features of a Vapor Explosion with Prototypic Reactor Materials

Hong

Kim

Min

et al. 2009

Journal of Nuclear Science and Technology

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The suppression of a vapor explosion is reviewed from a void fraction point of view from previous research results and the results of an experiment and analysis for TROI using a prototypic reactor material. In a tin-water system, a high fraction of air which played the role of steam reduced the peak pressure of a steam explosion. According to the sensitivity analysis that was carried out with an increase in vapor volume fraction, an energetic vapor explosion hardly took place in a mixture with a high void fraction. Under higher vapor fraction conditions ( v > 0:3), the vapor explosion was very weak. The prototypic corium showed a relatively high void fraction compared to ZrO 2 , which is known as an explosive material, because this corium system generates many smaller particles compared to the ZrO 2 system. Also this corium system showed a relatively low explosivity compared to the ZrO 2 system because the high void fraction of the corium system prevents contact between water and hot melt drops in the triggering stage. When considering the experimental results for the role of air instead of steam, an air supply system to provide a high volume fraction during a premixing process can radically prevent and/or mitigate a steam explosion.

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“…In addition to the facilities already mentioned, there are many other core degradation and melting material migration integral facilities, such as CODEX, which aims at investigating the core degradation within the light-water reactors (Hózer et al, 2000;Hózer, 2002;Hozer et al, 2003); LOFT, which aims at investigating the PWR core behavior during LOCA-type sequences (Jensen et al, 1989;Cronenberg, 1992); SANDIA-XR, which aims to determine the conditions under which steady lower core blockages are formed and those where they cannot be formed; SCARABEE, which aims to solve fast reactor security analysis and the behavior of fuel pool caused by a sub-assembly melting at full power; QUENCH, which is to explicitly investigate the effect of re-flooding on bundle degradation (Sepold et al, 2007(Sepold et al, , 2009Stuckert et al, 2010Stuckert et al, , 2011Stuckert and Steinbrück, 2014); with the tool FARO, researchers are able to conduct large-scale experiments in order to gain better knowledge of things including structure integration, coolant or molten core with less uncertainties considering relocation and melt progression (Hohmann et al, 1987;Magallon and Huhtiniemi, 2001); and KROTOS, aiming at exploring the problem of steam explosion (Magallon et al, 1996;Huhtiniemi et al, 1997;Annunziato et al, 1999;Huhtiniemi and Magallon, 2001). …”

Section: Experimental Research On Core Degradation and Melting Materimentioning

confidence: 99%