Numerical Modelling of Debris Bed Water Quenching

Dimitrios Pavlidis, Jefferson Luis Melo De Almeida Gomes, Pablo Salinas, Christopher C. Pain, Ali Tehrani, Mojitaba Moatamedi, Paul N. Smith, Allan Jones, Omar Matar

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Abstract

Debris beds may be formed during a nuclear reactor severe accident and coolability of these beds is important to avoid release of radioactive materials into the environment. However, debris bed water quenching is challenging to understand, and model, because of the complex multi-phase flow and heat transfer physics involved which may include boiling. This paper develops a modelling method for boiling and demonstrates its abilities with some applications. The model is based on a multi-fluid approach, in which one phase represents the liquid, the second phase the gas phase the third phase represents the solid debris bed. In each fluid phase a set of conservation equations for mass, energy and momentum are solved with appropriate inter-phase exchange terms coupling the fluid phases.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)64-71
Number of pages8
JournalProcedia IUTAM
Volume15
Early online date28 May 2015
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2015

Bibliographical note

Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the EPSRC MEMPHIS multi-phase programme grant, the EPSRC Computational modelling for advanced nuclear power plants project, the EU FP7 projects THINS and GoFastR and ExxonMobil for helping to fund this work.

Keywords

  • Boiling modelling
  • Heat transfer
  • Melt pool
  • Porous media flow

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