Attenuation of radiological consequences from CDA's by radiative heat transfer. Final report, 1 October 1976-31 March 1980

The scope of the research is to investigate the general role of radiation heat transfer in attenuating the radiological consequences from core disruptive accidents of a liquid metal fast breeder reactor. Several major tasks were completed. They comprise first of all the analysis of radiative cooling in attenuating the fuel vapor in a HCDA bubble submerged in a sodium pool, and secondly the analysis of the HCDA work potential attenuation by heat losses, predominately the radiative transfer, to upper core blanket and gas plenum structures. Thirdly, a general method was developed and analysis presented to evaluate radiative transfer from a high temperature condensable mixture. Also the effect of nonequilibrium mass transfer in such a high temperature mixture pertained to HCDA bubble has been assessed. Finally, the information on thermal radiation properties (absorption and reflection) of reactor materials, that are needed for radiative heat transfer calculations in accident analyses, is presented