Development of a simplified one-dimensional CDA bubble model

Abstract

Sodium-cooled fast reactors (SFRs) have high safety with an extremely low probability of a core disruptive accident (CDA). However, from a defense-in-depth perspective, the CDA sequence is still worth studying. Severe accidents in SFRs, such as unprotected loss of flow, might lead to a CDA during which fuel and some fission products could be instantly released from a large CDA bubble through potential leak paths in the top shield structure. Therefore, a reasonable prediction of dynamic behavior of a large-scale bubble within the sodium pool is vital for accurately evaluating the migration of source terms. In this study, we propose a simplified one-dimensional CDA bubble model that can handle heat and mass transfer in two-phase multicomponent materials in different computational domains during the rising of bubbles through the sodium pool toward the cover-gas region. In this model, an entrainment model based on the Rayleigh–Taylor instability and Kelvin–Helmholtz instability was used to explain the coolant entrainment through the gas/liquid boundary and jet fragmentation. The model also addresses the mitigation effect of non-condensable gases on the condensation of fuel, steel and sodium vapor at bubble interface. We evaluated the model using a past experiment on the expansion of a two-phase, large bubble with high pressure in a stagnant liquid pool conducted by Purdue University in the late 1970 s using a 1/7-scale model of Clinch River Breeder Reactor. Good agreement with the experimental data demonstrates that the developed model can reasonably represent the essential characteristics of dynamic behavior of a large, high-pressure bubble with heat and mass transfer in two-phase multicomponent materials. This is valuable for evaluating the migration of the source terms, which will be carried out in future studies.