Experimental research on heat transfer behavior of large scale two-layer salt melt pool based on COPRA facility

Abstract

During a core meltdown accident, the significant decay heat within the corium pool will continually impose thermal load on the vessel wall and challenge the integrity of reactor pressure vessel (RPV). External Reactor Vessel Cooling (ERVC) is considered to be an effective strategy to reduce the potential of vessel failure. After long-term cooling, the initially uniform melt pool can reach a final steady state with stable two-layer or three-layer configuration. Based on the COPRA facility, a series of tests were performed to study the natural convection heat transfer phenomenon of stratified corium pools. The test section was a full-scale 2D slice, simulating the hemispherical lower head of the HPR1000 reactor design. Direct electrical heating was applied in the lower part of vessel to simulate the homogenously heated ceramic pool, while no heat was generated in the upper part to model the metallic layer. A binary mixture of 20 mol% NaNO3–80 mol% KNO3 was selected as simulant material due to the similar phase-change characteristics with the prototypical melt. During the experiment, effects of heating power, top boundary condition, corium pool height, decay heat distribution and simulant material on corium pool heat transfer behavior were analyzed. The results implied that the top cooling and decay heat distribution slightly influenced the temperature and heat flux of ceramic pool, but strongly impacted the characteristics of metallic layer. The comparison between the dimensionless parameters of water tests and salt tests also demonstrated the key role of simulant material. Furthermore, the downward heat transfer Nudn and the upward heat transfer Nuup obtained from COPRA two-layer experiment were in accordance with the previous data or empirical correlations. Note that using the same simulant material for oxide layer and metal layer fails to repeat the boundary conditions in the reactor case, however, the current study pays more attention to the qualitative analysis of different influence on natural convection heat transfer behavior. More valuable information about the crust characteristics and stratification effect can be obtained by the following CFD simulation of these tests.