Scoping Experiments for Pressure Drop Measurement for the Ex-Vessel Debris Bed Coolability in Severe Accidents

To ensure the long-term cooling of corium in the reactor cavity, it is important to ensure the coolant ingression into the internally heat generated corium debris bed governed by pressure drop in the porous media. According to the previous investigations on molten fuel-coolant interactions (FCIs) experiments, the debris beds are expected to form channels in the bed due to intensive boiling and flow. And also, it was found that quenched particulate debris bed was composed of multi-sized (0∼10 mm), irregular shape particles and it has a micro/macro inhomogeneity such as axially and radially stratified debris bed, where a layer of smaller particles covers the main bed part. In this particulate debris bed with the internal heat generation by decay heat, not only co- but also counter-current two-phase flow may be occurred by the water inflow through sides of bed combined with steam outflow to top of bed. To investigate the effect of each characteristics of heterogeneous debris bed expected in real severe accident scenarios on pressure drop with various conditions, an experimental facility called as PICASSO (Pressure drop Investigation and Coolability ASSessment through Observation) facility was constructed. With the experimental facility, the scoping test was conducted as injecting upward air flow into the bottom of particle bed composed of 2 mm, 5 mm spherical SUJ-2 balls respectively, and the experimental data compared with Ergun equation. As a result of the single phase flow experiment using air, Ergun equation predicts the experimental data for the spherical particles with the diameter of 2 mm and 5 mm with a mean deviation of 14.62 %