• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.56 no.1
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• pp.132-140
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• 2024

In the event of a severe accident in Sodium Cooled Fast Reactors (SFR), the sodium combustion aerosols along with fission product aerosols would migrate to the environment through leak paths of the Reactor Containment Building (RCB) concrete wall under positive pressure. Understanding the characteristics of sodium aerosol transport through concrete leak paths is important as it governs the environmental source term. In this context, experiments are conducted to study the influence of various parameters like pressure, initial mass concentration, leak path diameter, humidity etc., on the transport and deposition of sodium aerosols in straight leak paths of concrete. The leak paths in concrete specimens are prepared by casting and the diameter of the leak path is measured using thermography technique. Aerosol transport experiments are conducted to measure the transported and plugged aerosol mass in the leak paths and corresponding plugging times. The values of differential pressure, aerosol concentration and relative humidity taken for the study are in the ranges 10-15 kPa, 0.65-3.04 g/m³ and 30-90% respectively. These observations are numerically simulated using 1-Dimensional transport equation. The simulated values are compared with the experimental results and reasonable agreement among them is observed. From the safety assessment view of reactor, the approach presented here is conservative as it is with straight leak paths.

• Applied Chemistry for Engineering
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• v.9 no.5
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• pp.674-679
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• 1998

Small water leak experiment was carried out in liquid sodium atmosphere using a specimen of ferrite steel, which will be expected to be a material of the heat transfer tube of liquid metal fast breeder reactor. Self-plugging phenomena of leak path could be explained by the products of reaction and corrosion by sodium-water reaction. Also, re-opening mechanism of self-plugged path could be explained by the thermal transient and vibration of heat transfer tube. As a result, perfect re-opening time of self-plugged leak path was observed to be 129 minutes after water leak initiation. Re-opening shape of a specimen was appeared with double layer of circular type, and re-opening size of this specimen surface was about 2 mm diameter on sodium side.

• Applied Chemistry for Engineering
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.268-272
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• 1998

Water leak phenomena in the liquid sodium which is a coolant of liquid metal reactor, were investigated by carrying out sodium-water reaction experiment. It was confirmed that sodium and water react each other by the analysis of material composition of aspecimen at the end of experiment. When steam of $100kg/cm^2$ was passed through the leak path of the specimen for 4 hours, reaction products from sodium-water reaction were observed on the leak site. However, re-opening phenomena were not observed at this condition. It was interpretted that the reaction product precipitated on leak path and thermal transient caused self-plugging and re-openning phenomena, respectively.

• Applied Chemistry for Engineering
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.531-536
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• 1999

Experiments on micro-leak of water were carried out with the water injecting simulator in liquid sodium atmosphere. The leak path was plugged by the sodium-water reaction products in the 2.25Cr-1Mo steel specimen. However, leak paths re-opened in most cases. The self-wastage patterns were not affected by the sodium temperature in the re-opened specimen. The diameter of the defected area, including the re-opened part, was about 5 min. It took 143, 40.7 and 34.7 minutes to re-open the leak path at 450, 475, and $510^{\circ}C$, respectively. It was concluded that the reopening time decreased with the increasing temperature.