TRAN B-3: Experimental Investigation of Fuel Crust Stability on Melting Surfaces of an Annular Flow Channel.

摘要

The TRAN B series of experiments is being conducted at Sandia National Laboratories to investigate the characteristics of fuel removal/freezing through the upper axial blankets of an LMFBR during the transition phase of a hypothetical core disruptive accident. The third experiment in this series, TRAN B-3, was performed in February 1984, and the results are reported herein. This experiment involved the injection of molten UO2 into an annular flow channel. Unlike the similar TRAN B-1 experiment, the initial steel wall temperature in B-3 was sufficiently high that instantaneous steel melting would occur upon contact with molten fuel. The earlier TRAN B-1 results had shown that fuel crusts are initially stable, both on the inside of a steel tube as well as on the outside of a steel rod, when no steel melting occurred. TRAN B-3 was designed to investigate this question of crust stability on surfaces of opposite curvature when surface melting did occur.