SNL/JAEA collaboration on sodium fire benchmarking

Clark, A. J.*; Denman, M. R.*; Takata, Takashi  ; Ohshima, Hiroyuki

Two sodium spray fire experiments performed by Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) were used for a code-to-code comparison between CONTAIN-LMR and SPHINCS. Both computer codes are used for modeling sodium accidents in sodium fast reactors. The comparison between the two codes provides insights into the ability of both codes to model sodium spray fires. The SNL T3 and T4 experiments are 20 kg sodium spray fires with sodium spray temperatures of 200C and 500C, respectively. The vessel in the SNL T4 experiment experienced a rapid pressurization that caused of the instrumentation ports to fail during the sodium spray. Despite these unforeseen difficulties, both codes were shown in good agreement with the experiments. SPHINCS showed better long-term agreement with the SNL T3 experiment than CONTAIN-LMR. The unexpected port failure during the SNL T4 experiment presented modelling challenges.