Particulate Debris Spreading and Coolability

Sammanfattning: In Nordic design of boiling water reactors, a deep water pool under the reactor vessel is employed for the core melt fragmentation and the long term cooling of decay heated corium debris in case of a severe accident. To assess the effectiveness of such accident management strategy the Risk-Oriented Accident Analysis Methodology has been proposed. The present work contributes to the further development of the methodology and is focused on the issue of ex-vessel debris coolability.The height and shape of the porous debris bed are among the most important factors that determine if the debris can be cooled by natural circulation of water. The bed geometry is formed in the process of melt release, fragmentation, sedimentation and packing of the debris in the pool. Bed shape is affected by the coolant flow that induces movement of particles in the pool and after settling on top of the bed. The later one is called debris bed self-leveling phenomenon.In this study, the self-leveling was investigated experimentally and analytically. Experiments were carried out in order to collect data necessary for the development of a numerical model with an empirical closure. The self-leveling model was coupled to a model for prediction of the debris bed dryout. Such coupled code allows to calculate the time necessary to have a coolable configuration of the bed. The influence of input parameters was assessed through sensitivity analysis in order to screen out the less influential parameters.Results of the risk analysis are reported as complementary cumulative distribution functions of the conditional containment failure probability (CCFP).Sensitivity analyses identified: effective particle diameter and debris bed porosity as the parameters that provide the largest contribution to the CCFP uncertainty. It is found that the effect of the initial maximum height of the bed on the CCFP is reduced by the self-leveling.