Free convective heat transfer experiment to validate air-cooling performance analysis of fuel debris

Uesawa, Shinichiro  ; Yamashita, Susumu   ; Shibata, Mitsuhiko ; Yoshida, Hiroyuki  

A dry method for fuel debris is proposed for decommissioning of TEPCO's Fukushima Daiichi NPS. We have been evaluating the air-cooling performance of the fuel debris in the dry method by using JUPITER. Because JUPITER can calculate relocation of the corium, it is expected to calculate thermal-hydraulic simulation of the air cooling of the fuel debris in the dry method based on the calculated debris position, shapes and composition with the relocation analysis. In this paper, the experiment of heat transfer and flow visualization of free convection adjacent to upward-facing horizontal heat transfer surface was performed to validate the calculation of the free convective heat transfer with JUPITER. In the experiment, the temperature distribution was measured with a thermocouple tree. In addition, the velocity distribution of free convection was visualized by a particle image velocimetry (PIV). In the comparison between the JUPITER and the experiment, the temperature distribution for the vertical direction in the quasi-steady state was fitted between the JUPITER and the experiment. The velocity distribution calculated with JUPITER was also in good agreement with the experimental result. Therefore, it is expected that JUPITER is a helpful numerical method to evaluate the air-cooling performance of the fuel debris in the dry method.