Experimental study of the interaction between molten corium and new sacrificial material for ex-vessel melt retention

Abstract

Ex-vessel melt Retention (EVR) is one of the important countermeasures to address the issue of basement melt penetration in the course of a hypothetical severe accident in a nuclear power plant. Specifically designed sacrificial material plays a pivotal role in EVR and therefore the verification of the material selection is required. A new experiment platform has been established to carry out experiments on the interaction of molten corium and new sacrificial materials. This paper gives an introduction to the platform and a pre-experiment based on it. Fe2O3 and ZrO2 are used in the test, and the result shows that this platform was capable to reveal the interaction between two kinds of material under a specific condition. Besides, heat balance analysis of the pre-experiment is also presented to help understand the melting process of the molten corium.

Keywords

• Ex-vessel melt retention
• Melt-sacrificial interaction
• New sacrificial material