• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.54 no.1
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• pp.162-176
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• 2022

In Lead-based reactor (LBR) severe accident, the meltdown and migration inside the reactor core will lead to fuel fragment concentration, which may further cause re-criticality and even core disintegration. Accurately predicting the migration and solidification behavior of melt in LBR severe accidents is of prime importance for safety analysis of LBR. In this study, the Moving Particle Semi-implicit (MPS) method is validated and used to simulate the migration and solidification behavior. Two main surface tension models are validated and compared. Meanwhile, the MPS method is validated by the L-plate solidification test. Based on the improved MPS method, the migration and solidification behavior of melt in LBR severe accident was studied furthermore. In the Pb-Bi coolant, the melt flows upward due to density difference. The migration and solidification behavior are greatly affected by the surface tension and viscous resistance varying with enthalpy. The whole movement process can be divided into three stages depending on the change in velocity. The heat transfer of core melt is determined jointly by two heat transfer modes: flow heat transfer and solid conductivity. Generally, the research results indicate that the MPS method has unique advantage in studying the migration and solidification behavior in LBR severe accident.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.49 no.7
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• pp.1442-1450
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• 2017

In liquid metal fast breeder reactors, postulated failures of the plant protection system may lead to serious unprotected accidental consequences. Unprotected transients are generically categorized as transient overpower accidents and transient under cooling accidents. In both cases, core meltdown may occur and this can lead to a molten fuel coolant interaction (MFCI). The understanding of MFCI phenomena is essential for study of debris coolability and characteristics during post-accident heat removal. Sodium is used as coolant in liquid metal fast breeder reactors. Viewing inside sodium at elevated temperature is impossible because of its opaqueness. In the present study, a methodology to depict MFCI phenomena using a flat panel detector based imaging system (i.e., real time radiography) is brought out using a woods metal-water experimental facility which simulates the $UO_2-Na$ interaction. The developed imaging system can capture attributes of the MFCI process like jet breakup length, jet front velocity, fragmented particle size, and a profile of the debris bed using digital image processing methods like image filtering, segmentation, and edge detection. This paper describes the MFCI process and developed imaging methodology to capture MFCI attributes which are directly related to the safe aspects of a sodium fast reactor.