A Study of Prediction Model Improvement for Air-Oxidation Breakaway in a Postulated Spent Nuclear Fuel Pool Complete Loss of Coolant Accident

Sanggil Park, Jaeyoung Lee and Min Bum Park
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Sanggil Park: Nuclear Energy Team, Lee & Ko, Seoul 04532, Korea
Jaeyoung Lee: School of Mechanical and Control Engineering, Handong Global University, Pohang 37554, Korea
Min Bum Park: Department of Energy and Chemical Engineering, Incheon National University, Incheon 22012, Korea

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 3, 1-7

Abstract: The temperature of zirconium alloy cladding on the postulated spent nuclear fuel pool complete loss of coolant accident is abruptly increased at a certain time and the cladding is almost fully oxidized to weak ZrO 2 in the air. This abrupt temperature escalation phenomenon induced by the air-oxidation breakaway is called a zirconium fire. Although an air-oxidation breakaway kinetic model correlated between time and temperature has been implemented in the MELCOR code, it is likely to bring about unexpected large errors because of many limitations of model derivation. This study suggests an improved time–temperature correlated kinetic model using the Johnson–Mehl equation. It is based on that the air-oxidation breakaway is initiated by the phase transformation from the tetragonal to monoclinic ZrO 2 at the oxide–metal interface in the cladding. This new model equation is also evaluated with the Zry-4 air-oxidation literature data. This equation resulted in the almost similar air-oxidation breakaway timing to the actual experimental data at 800 °C. However, at 1000 °C, it showed an error of about 8 min. This could be inferred from the influence of the ZrN phase change due to the nitrogen existing in air.

Keywords: zirconium fire; air-oxidation breakaway; spent fuel pool; phase transformation; Johnson–Mehl equation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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