A New Insight Into Molten Corium Concrete Interaction With Concrete Ablation Analysis for Mitigation Scheme

Abstract

Abstract The study presents the use of CORQUENCH simulator to simultaneously model the molten corium, composition of concrete, molten corium heat transfer models and solve the related chemical reactions. Using this modeling technique, the chemical reaction capabilities of CORQUENCH were successfully utilized which enabled the modeling of interaction between molten corium and concrete. The developed model was validated against experimental data and the results showed that the temperature of corium, composition of concrete and water injection time have a pronounced effect on mitigating depth of ablation and reactor integrity in case of a nuclear accident. In addition, the composition of concrete is the main controlling factor to mitigate ablation in the investigated case study. An alternative to concrete, could be a certain igneous rock (tested in this study), can lead to comparatively low rates of ablation due to its high thermal resistant properties. Furthermore, the injection of water (as a cooling agent) into the reactor cavity should also be optimized to enhance corium quenching to avoid ablation via basement melt-through. As a consequence of concrete ablation by molten corium, the depth of ablation is expected to decrease to zero ablation with the suggested material in the selected case study. The concrete ablation mechanisms during MCCI are very case-dependent on the concrete solidus, liquidus and ablation temperature, respectively.