Preliminary deformation analysis of the reactor vessel due to core debris accumulation onto the reactor vessel bottom for sodium-cooled fast reactor

Onoda, Yuichi ; Yamano, Hidemasa   

In Japan, sodium-cooled fast reactor design takes In-Vessel Retention (IVR) strategy to stably cool damaged core materials in the reactor vessel during a severe accident with various design measures. Although a possibility to fail IVR is extremely low, a probabilistic risk assessment study needs a wide variety of scenarios including the IVR failure. Therefore, in order to study a wide range of event spectra related to stable cooling of debris in the reactor vessel, this study numerically investigated the deformation and failure behavior of the reactor vessel due to the debris deposited onto the skirt of the core catcher using the FINAS-STAR structural analysis code. The analyses are conducted in two cases of power density with the aim of investigating failure conditions of the bottom of the reactor vessel. Reactor vessel deforms significantly when the temperature reaches about 1100 C and the reactor vessel reaches the failure criteria in high-power-density case.