| Abstract: | Ex-vessel steam explosion may happen as a result of melting core falling into the reactor cavity after failure of the reactor vessel and interaction with the coolant in the cavity pool. It can cause the formation of shock waves and production of missiles that may endanger surrounding structures. Ex-vessel steam explosion energetics is affected strongly by three dimensional(3D) structure geometry and initial conditions. Ex-vessel steam explosions in a typical pressurized water reactor cavity are analyzed with the code MC3 D, which is developed for simulating fuel-coolant interactions. The reactor cavity with a venting tunnel is modeled based on 3D cylindrical coordinate. A study was performed with parameters of the location of molten drop release, break size,melting temperature, cavity water subcooling, triggering time and explosion position, so as to establish parameters' influence on the fuel-coolant interaction behavior, to determine the most challenging cases and to estimate the expected pressure loadings on the cavity walls. The most dangerous case shows the pressure loading is above the capacity of a typical reactor cavity wall. |
