Experimental study on aerosol behavior in water pool scrubbing under severe accident conditions

Abstract

In severe accident of nuclear power plant, large quantities of steam and radioactive aerosol may release to the containment. Meanwhile, hydrogen may be generated by zirconium-steam reaction and released to the containment and mixed with steam and air to form a flammable mixture (H2, H2O, Air) which might combust even explode to generate mechanical and thermal load on containment. In this situation, timely containment venting strategies (CVS) is an important and effective measure to release the containment atmosphere to decrease the pressure. In order to remove the radioactive aerosol particles and cool the high temperature mixture, the containment atmosphere are vented to the water pool. This paper mainly investigated the behavior of aerosol scrubbing in water pool. The effects of submergence depth, aerosol particle diameter and aerosol concentration were preliminary studied by conducting a series of experiments. The results illustrate that the scrubbing efficiency of gas jet injection into water pool almost larger than 90%. And the aerosol particle diameter and submergence depth have significant influence on decontamination factor (DF). This paper provide data basis and reference to the subsequent work.