Heat transfer characteristics inside an adjacent tube thermally-affected by sodium-water reaction in steam generator of sodium-cooled commercial fast reactor

Kurihara, Akikazu ; Umeda, Ryota ; Yanagisawa, Hideki*; Ohshima, Hiroyuki

In the case of sodium-water reaction accident in a steam generator of sodium-cooled fast reactors (FRs), adjacent heat transfer tubes may be damaged due to high temperature environment of the reaction field. For the purpose of understanding the overheating tube rupture mechanism, an experimental study has been performed to clarify waterside heat transfer characteristics during up-flow in a vertical tube under the real plant part-load operation conditions in which safety margin is least. A test tube was heated rapidly and the time averaged heat flux was estimated using an inverse solution. It was conformed that the heat transfer on the wall changed from nucleate boiling to transient-film boiling all over the heating section and dried-out surface spread from downstream toward upstream. We improved the heat transfer correlations applied to RELAP5 code and made sure the adequacy of these correlations to evaluate tube overheating.