Experimental results of the QUENCH-16 bundle test on air ingress

Abstract

-The out-of-pile bundle experiment QUENCH-16 on air ingress was conducted in the

A comparison of core degradation phenomena in the CORA, QUENCH, Phébus SFD and Phébus FP experiments

“…Smallscale tests at 2000 • C with irradiated (53 GWd/tU, rather high in comparison with the Phébus fuel) and unirradiated fuels showed substantial differences with an apparent more rapid dissolution of the irradiated pellets; (g) The transition from rod-like to melt pool geometry may be expressed simply in modelling codes by a temperature criterion, 2500 ± 200 K (Clément and Zeyen, 2013;Barrachin et al, 2013). This is consistent with the results of the separateeffects VERCORS experimental programme conducted by CEA (Pontillon et al, 2005), while noting that the VERCORS tests do not involve structural material other than Zircaloy; (h) The effect of air ingress has been studied in QUENCH at KIT Stuckert and Steinbrück, 2014), and in small-scale tests by IRSN (Duriez et al, 2013) and KIT (Steinbrück, 2009), such effects as higher heat-up rates (due to higher heat of reaction and reduced cooling) and formation of a thick oxide layer under porous oxide/nitride layer during reflood were observed.…”

“…In order to investigate explicitly the effect of refloods on bundle degradation the QUENCH program was initiated in Karlsruhe in 1996 and is still on-going (Sepold et al, 2007(Sepold et al, , 2009Steinbrück et al, 2010;Stuckert et al, 2010Stuckert et al, , 2011Stuckert and Steinbrück, 2014). This comprises bundle experiments, Table 2, as well as complementary separate-effects tests.…”

“…QUENCH-16 (air ingress/reflood); middle part of bundle after dismounting of ZrO2 insulation (deleted together with shroud parts) showing severe degradation(Stuckert et al, 2013).…”

Review on Core Degradation and Material Migration Research in Light-Water Reactors

“…In addition to the facilities already mentioned, there are many other core degradation and melting material migration integral facilities, such as CODEX, which aims at investigating the core degradation within the light-water reactors (Hózer et al, 2000;Hózer, 2002;Hozer et al, 2003); LOFT, which aims at investigating the PWR core behavior during LOCA-type sequences (Jensen et al, 1989;Cronenberg, 1992); SANDIA-XR, which aims to determine the conditions under which steady lower core blockages are formed and those where they cannot be formed; SCARABEE, which aims to solve fast reactor security analysis and the behavior of fuel pool caused by a sub-assembly melting at full power; QUENCH, which is to explicitly investigate the effect of re-flooding on bundle degradation (Sepold et al, 2007(Sepold et al, , 2009Stuckert et al, 2010Stuckert et al, , 2011Stuckert and Steinbrück, 2014); with the tool FARO, researchers are able to conduct large-scale experiments in order to gain better knowledge of things including structure integration, coolant or molten core with less uncertainties considering relocation and melt progression (Hohmann et al, 1987;Magallon and Huhtiniemi, 2001); and KROTOS, aiming at exploring the problem of steam explosion (Magallon et al, 1996;Huhtiniemi et al, 1997;Annunziato et al, 1999;Huhtiniemi and Magallon, 2001). …”

Development and validation of the multi-physics DRACCAR code

“…This bundle degradation scenario under oxygen starvation conditions is not totally unknown since it has been much studied in the QUENCH program at KIT (Steinbruck et al, 2010 andSteinbruck, 2014) and also in steam environment within the international PHEBUS Fission Products program at IRSN (De Luze et al, 2013).…”