Effect of Internal Heat Generation on Solidification of Molten Fuel Droplet during its Interaction with Coolant in a Nuclear Reactor

Abstract

One of the important issues in safety analysis of severe accidents in fast reactors is Molten Fuel Coolant Interaction (MFCI). MFCI is the phenomenon in which fragmentation of the molten fuel takes place when it comes in direct contact with liquid sodium coolant. For complete understanding of MFCI, we need to study the solidification of the molten fuel happening along with fragmentation. Solidification / melting of any material initially held at its melting temperature is the classic Stefan’s problem. In the case of a severe reactor accident the molten fuel might have a significant amount of decay heat, even though nuclear fission reactions have been stopped by reactor shut down systems. The presence of decay heat in this case, makes the transient Stefan problem more difficult to solve analytically. Here, an investigation of this special case of Stefan’s problem with internal heat generation in nuclear materials has been carried out considering a typical droplet size of 4 mm diameter. The numerical heat transfer analysis has been carried out using the commercial software Fluent. The validation of the problem is done with the steady state analytical solution available for the position of phase change front. Parametric studies have been carried out by varying internal heat generation rates and convective heat transfer coefficient at the surface of the droplet. Temperature profiles and liquid fraction are obtained at different instants. Solidification time and final equilibrium temperature are estimated from the results. It is observed that there is significant increase in drop solidification time for heat generation rates (HG) greater than 100 MW/m3 for the drop size of 4 mm. The maximum HG which is tolerated by the droplet without reaching its boiling point is about 6 GW/m3 when the heat transfer coefficient from its surface is fixed at h=56000W/m2K.