The Vapor Explosion

Littoral hydrovolcanic explosions: a case study of lava–seawater interaction at Kilauea Volcano

“…The phenomenon, known as a Õapor explosion, or fuel-coolant interaction, has been the subject of considerable investigation by engineers because of recurring industrial accidents involving spills of molten metals, liquefied natural gas, and paper smelts into water or other Ž liquid coolants e.g., Witte et al, 1970;Witte and . Cox, 1978 .…”

THERMOHYDRODYNAMIC MODEL FOR MOLTEN UO$sub 2$--Na INTERACTION, PERTAINING TO FAST-REACTOR FUEL-FAILURE ACCIDENTS.

“…In one case, the loading of wet scrap aluminum into a furnace produced an explosion causing six deaths, 40 injuries, and approximately $1,000,000 in property damage. Although these two cases resulted in severe damage, many smaller accidents have been reported involving molten metals and paper smelt 7 (fused sodium carbonate).…”

“…A good review of the present state of the art, with respect to fragmentation, is given by Witte et al 7 A parallel effort concerning the phenomena associated with fuelelement failure is being conducted in a series of in-pile experiments, the main body of which are being carried out in the TREAT irradiation facility. Basically, these experiments have supplied data on the threshold and mode of fuel-element failure, movement of fuel during transient heating, swelling, melting, and postfallure effects of fuel-coolant interaction.…”

“…On the contrary, there is strong indication, as discussed in the literature survey and Appendix A, that vapor generation may be the actual cause of fuel breakup. Of the four fragmentation theories reviewed by Witte et al, 7 that is, the entrapment, violent boiling, shell, and inertia (Weber Number) theories, all but the last consider vaporization as the initiating mechanism of breakup of molten material. However, the Weber Number effect has been shown to be important mainly with materials at a much lower I | temperature range than that of molten U0 2 .…”

Studies of homogeneous nucleation and transient heat transfer in cryogenic liquids

“…It is well known that if boiling is initiated in a highly superheated liquid the liquid will boil explosively. Such explosive boiling presents a safety hazard in industry and is considered to be involved in the dangerous and destructive explosive phenomenon known as contact vapor explosion observed in many metallurgical processes and in paper smelt processing (Blander and Katz 1973, Bradley and Witte 1972, Brauer et ale 1968, Flory et al 1969 1970, Long 1957, Nelson and Kennedy 1956, Witte et al 1970). …”