Influence of heat transfer on walls due to aerosol decomposition rate in the containment building of nuclear power plants during heavy incidents

Today, German nuclear power plants are leading in safety standards worldwide. Increasing potentials arise continuously along with improvements in technology. One of these potentials is the best-estimate simulation of fission product transport in case of a severe accident. A main part of the fission products is allocated on aerosols. Therefore, the aerosol behavior before containment leakage is important for the radioactive source term to the environment. Having a good knowledge about the main aerosol phenomena, it is possible to simulate them numerically. This enables to develop and test safety measures to limit damages before accidents occur. Within this study, the main aerosol phenomena have been ascertained and accordingly classified into formation, transport and reduction. On this basis, simulations of one- and multi-component aerosol experiments of the KAEVER series have been performed with the COCOSYS code. Due to an overprediction of the computed volume condensation rate, the results showed an overestimation of the reduction rate of insoluble aerosols. The reason was found to be the underestimation of the wall condensation rate. Based on an additional plain thermal hydraulic multi compartment experiment, these uncertainties in the wall heat transfer correlations were investigated in detail. The results show a strong dependency between the wall condensation rate and the convective heat transfer, resp. the characteristic length. In case of mainly forced convection, correct values for the characteristic length led to an underestimation of the calculated heat transfer coefficients. The analysis of the heat transfer models show an inconsistency in the coupling of free and forced convection. Therefore, an improved and consistent convection model has been developed and implemented. Both models have been tested on different experiments. Although the new model shows only minor improvements, it could be proven that the influence for forced convection is significant. Based on the findings, a further improvement of the wall heat transfer models and therefore the aerosol reduction rates of insoluble aerosols can be realized only, if the geometry and flow information are considered and handled more easily e.g. in a similar way than in the application of CFD codes. (orig.)