Previous work identified and evaluatedmitigation methods and techniques for addressingpotential future deficiencies associated with weldedstainless steel canisters and their components that are partof the confinement boundary. While considerable progresshas been made in quantifying the source term, littleattention has been given to the leakage itself or to thesource term–reducing processes inside the leak path.Limited experimental evidence is available on theimportance of aerosol retention in chloride-induced stresscorrosion cracks through stainless steel canisters.Nevertheless, the accuracy of consequence assessmentscan be greatly improved by accounting for the leak pathdeposition of aerosol in the source term. The filtrationeffect of such cracks is interestingly relevant to the sourceterm assessments. An important side effect of aerosoldeposition in leak paths could be the plugging of the leakpath. Further research into this phenomenon is desirable.The purpose of the present work is to introduce a generic,reliable numerical model for prediction of aerosoltransport, deposition, and plugging in leak paths that aresimilar to stress corrosion cracks while accounting forpotential plugging formation. The model is dynamic(changing leak path geometry due to plugging), and itrelies on the numerical solution of the aerosol transportequation in one dimension using finite differences. Anextensive validation exercise (particle diameters: 0.01–10μm and pressure difference up to 12 kPa) was conductedbased on comparisons with experimental and theoreticaldata. The developed model is fairly general, since it isbased on a generic mechanistic description of the aerosolflow and particle deposition in the leak path. Thedeveloped model does not require experimental fittingsother than using the leak rate parameters commonlyavailable in practical applications. Despite theapproximate agreement of the model with the experimentaldata, the obtained predictions can be qualified as realistic.This is a major achievement of the model, which was basedon generic aerosol mechanics with no reference to oradjustment for experimental data.
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