Hydrogen generation analysis of the QUENCH-05 experiment

Abstract

The safety of nuclear reactors continues to be a topic of interest, especially in the event of a severe accident. The prediction of the development and consequences of a severe accident must be based on experimentation and mathematical modeling. The QUENCH program emerged with the aim of creating an experimental database that can be used for the development and validation of mathematical models focused mainly on determining the source term of hydrogen during the early stage of core degradation and response to re-flooding conditions. In the present work, the data from the QUENCH-05 Experiment are used to validate a mathematical model, where different correlations were evaluated to determine the oxidation rate; in order to model more accurately: the temperature at different heights of the fuel rod simulator, hydrogen generation, and the thickness of ZrO2. The correlations to determine the oxidation rate are divided into 2 sections; the first comprises the heating and pre-oxidation stages; while the second section comprises the transition and quenching stages. The results obtained with the mathematical model show good agreement with the data from the QUENCH-05 Experiment.