Improvement of a physical model for blockage formation of solid-liquid mixture flow with freezing for core safety evaluation of SFRs

Aoyagi, Mitsuhiro ; Kamiyama, Kenji  ; Tobita, Yoshiharu

The SIMMER code has been developed to analyze event progression during core disruptive accidents (CDAs) in sodium-cooled fast reactors. One of key phenomena during CDAs is blockage formation of solid-liquid mixture flow with freezing since it affects reactivity. A physical model for blockage formation of solid-liquid mixture flow with freezing in the SIMMER code is improved in this study to dissolve some inconsistencies between the modeling and the physical phenomena involved in the solid-liquid mixture flow with freezing for more precise evaluation of CDA. The improved model is validated with a systematical procedure through a benchmark analysis of an experiment. Consequently, experimental penetration behaviors are simulated reasonably by the SIMMER code analysis with the improved model while excessive blockage formation occurred in the analysis with the original model.