Experiment and analysis for development of evaluation method for cooling of residual core materials in core disruptive accidents of sodium-cooled fast reactors

Imaizumi, Yuya ; Aoyagi, Mitsuhiro ; Kamiyama, Kenji  ; Matsuba, Kenichi  ; Akayev, A. S.*; Mikisha, A. V.*; Baklanov, V. V.*; Vurim, A. D.*

The cooling of the residual core materials after the fuel discharge from the SFR core in the core disruptive accident can significantly affect the distribution fraction of the core materials which is an important factor for the in-vessel retention (IVR). The cooling of the residual core materials is called "in-place cooling". For the evaluation of the in-place cooling, behavior in a SFR core was simulated by SIMMER-III, and method of phenomena identification and ranking table (PIRT) was applied based on the analysis result. Experiment which focuses on the thermal-hydraulic phenomena which were extracted by the PIRT was conducted in the framework of EAGLE-3 project. Continuous oscillation of sodium level which can occur in the phase of in-place cooling of SFRs was observed in the experiment, and analysis by the SIMMER-III was conducted. By investigation of the analysis result, difference between the experiment and analysis results was revealed to be due to remaining and occupation of non-condensable gas above the sodium level which would be unrealistic in the experiment. Gas mixture model between non-condensable gas and sodium vapor was developed to solve this problem, and coincidence between experiment and analysis results was largely improved by this new model.