Emergency cooling experiments in the REBEKA facility

The REBEKA Project is being implemented at the Institute of Reactor Components of the Karlsruhe Nuclear Research Center within the framework of the Nuclear Safety Project. It serves to determine the rupture data of zircaloy cladding tubes and to assess the origins of cooling channel blockages in order to determine the emergency cooling capability in case of a loss-of-coolant accident. The experimental findings are used to develop and verify computer models for calculating the rupture data of zircaloy cladding tubes and computer models for advance calculation of cooling channel blockages in a fuel element in a loss-of-coolant accident. The results obtained so far have already had an impact on the German licensing procedure and are to play a major role also in the safety assessment of PWR in the United Kingdom. (orig.)