BASIC EXPERIMENTAL STUDY ON EFFECTIVENESS OF NUCLEAR WASTE LONG-TERM STORAGE CONTAINERS WITH PAR FOR REDUCING CONCENTRATION OF HYDROGEN GAS (2) HYDROGEN BEHAVIOR IN A SMALL-SCALE MODELED CONTAINER

摘要

As for the decommissioning of Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant (1F), a long-term waste storage container with high safety is requested to store radioactive materials such as fuel debris for a long period of time. Since hydrogen is generated by radioactive decomposition of water, it is important to keep the concentration of hydrogen gas below the explosion limit in order to ensure the safety of the container. Then, use of passive autocatalytic recombiner (PAR) was proposed to reduce the hydrogen concentration. PAR is installed in the container. In order to experimentally confirm the reduction of hydrogen concentration by PAR and hydrogen behavior in the container, an experimental apparatus consisting of a small-scale modeled container and a hydrogen supply system was provided. Preliminary experiments were begun for confirming fundamental performance of the experimental apparatus under the conditions that PAR and simulated fuel debris are not installed in the container. Moreover, the hydrogen behavior in the container was analyzed numerically. In addition, the steam behavior generated by the chemical reaction of hydrogen and oxygen by PAR was also predicted. This paper describes both results of the preliminary experiments and numerical simulations. The experimental results showed that the hydrogen behavior can be predicted using the temperature distributions in the container. The analysis results clarified the controlling factors on the hydrogen behavior and the steam distribution in the container by PAR.