Applicability of a mechanistic numerical method for sodium-water reaction phenomena in steam generators of sodium-cooled fast reactors

Abstract

When pressurized water or vapor leaks from a failed heat transfer tube in a steam generator of sodium-cooled fast reactors, a high-velocity, high-temperature jet with sodium-water chemical reaction may cause wastage on the adjacent tubes. For assessment of the wastage environment, a mechanistic computer code called SERAPHIM calculating compressible multicomponent multiphase flow with sodium-water chemical reaction has been developed. In this study, applicability of the SERAPHIM code was investigated through the analysis of the experiment on water vapor discharging in liquid sodium under actual condition of the steam generator. The computational domain consists of the cylindrical vessel and the simulated two horizontal heat transfer tubes. The cylindrical vessel was initially filled with liquid sodium. Pressurized water vapor goes into the sodium pool vertically upward from the discharging nozzle located at the center of one of the two tubes. The numerical result showed that the underexpanded jet appeared and impinged on the target tube located above the discharging tube. The calculated temperature distribution agreed with the measurement result well. The liquid droplet entrainment and its transport were considered in this analysis. The region with higher impingement velocity of the liquid droplet was close to the wastage region confirmed in the experiment.

Keywords

• sodium cooled fast reactor
• steam generator
• sodium water reaction
• failure propagation
• mechanistic numerical method