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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Nucl. Eng.
Sec. Nuclear Safety
Volume 4 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fnuen.2025.1579828
This article is part of the Research TopicNuclear Reactor Safety and Accident Mitigation ManagementView all 3 articles
Mechanistic assessment of aerosol transport in SFR cover gas space post HCDA conditions
Provisionally accepted- 1Atomic Energy Regulatory Board, Mumbai, Maharashtra, India
- 2Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research (IGCAR), Mahabalipuram, India
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With the growing emphasis on safety in next-generation reactors, along with the necessity topractically eliminate large doses to the public from severe accidents, a mechanistic assessment ofsuch accidents becomes very important problem. The present manuscript attempts to address thesource term assessment, focusing on the release behaviour of the aerosol from the roof-slab leakpaths post-Core Disruptive Accident (CDA) conditions (known as interface source term or covergas source term). Following a CDA, after possible Na leak through the gap between rotating plugsand major components, the cover gas space could be in contact with the containment atmospherethrough these open leak paths. Additionally, the impact of sodium slug to roof-slab could havecaused roof-slab cooling line failure. The present study assesses the release behaviour of the aerosolsfrom the roof-slab leak paths, with respect to aerosol size under various cases of roof-slab coolingline failure. Sodium aerosols are used as representative aerosols for studying the radionuclide (RN)aerosol release behaviour. The assessment indicates that most of the aerosol leaking from roof-slableak paths are of the diameter between 5 to 25 μm, with leak rates peaking in the range of 17-23μm. Furthermore, with respect to air ingress concern, it is observed that the air ingress from thecontainment atmosphere was found only in the annular leak paths and it is not mixing into covergas. However, this ingress was limited to the annular leak path only. It is seen that higher leak ratesare observed in the case of complete failure of the roof-slab cooling system. Hence, it is importantto maintain the roof-slab bottom plate temperatures within limits to avoid larger aerosol leak rates.
Keywords: Cover gas region, Source term, severe accident, OpenFOAM, SFR, CDA
Received: 19 Feb 2025; Accepted: 18 Apr 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Rajendrabhai Patel, Kumar and Arul. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Amit Kumar, Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research (IGCAR), Mahabalipuram, India
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