Review of the Safety Concern Related to CANDU Moderator Temperature Distribution and Status of KAERI Moderator Circulation Test (MCT) Experiments

Following a large break LOCA and before Emergency Coolant Injection (ECI) initiation, pressure tubes (PT) significantly heat up as a result of the initial power pulse and degraded coolant flow. Consequently, some pressure tubes balloon and come into contact with the calandria tubes (CT). Following the PT/CT contact, the pressure tubes cool as they transfer some of the absorbed heat to the moderator via conduction at contact locations. As long as sustained calandria tube dryout does not occur, the calandria tube surface temperature remains below the creep threshold temperature and no further deformation is expected. Consequently, a sufficient condition to ensure fuel channel integrity following a large LOCA, is the avoidance of sustained calandria tubes dryout. If the moderator available subcooling at the onset of a large LOCA is greater than the subcooling requirements, a sustained calandria tube dryout is avoided. The subcooling requirements are determined from a set of experiments known as fuel channel contact experiments. The difference between available subcooling and required subcooling is called subcooling margins. The moderator flow circulation patterns are complicated slow flows that significantly vary from buoyancy dominated to inertia dominated patterns. Accurate predictions of flow patterns are essential for accurate calculation of moderator temperature distributions and the related moderator subcooling. Following a large break LOCA and before Emergency Coolant Injection (ECI) initiation, pressure tubes (PT) significantly heat up as a result of the initial power pulse and degraded coolant flow. Consequently, some pressure tubes balloon and come into contact with the calandria tubes (CT). Following the PT/CT contact, the pressure tubes cool as they transfer some of the absorbed heat to the moderator via conduction at contact locations. As long as sustained calandria tube dryout does not occur, the calandria tube surface temperature remains below the creep threshold temperature and no further deformation is expected. Consequently, a sufficient condition to ensure fuel channel integrity following a large LOCA, is the avoidance of sustained calandria tubes dryout. If the moderator available subcooling at the onset of a large LOCA is greater than the subcooling requirements, a sustained calandria tube dryout is avoided. The temperature oscillations observed in reactor and in test measurements such as MTF need to be characterized and quantified to show that it does not jeopardize the currently available safety margins. Because of the importance of an accurate prediction of moderator temperature distributions and the related moderator subcooling, a 1/4 scaled-down moderator tank of a CANDU-6 reactor, called Moderator Circulation Test (MCT), was erected at KAERI and the current status of MCT experiment progress is described and further experiments are expected to be carried out to generate the experimental data necessary to validate the computer codes that will be used to analyze the accident analysis of operating CANDU-6 plants