Sandia Laboratories' debris bed studies program

The primary objectives of the debris bed studies are: (1) to produce beds of particulate material representing LMFBR core debris, self-heated by uranium fission (simulating fission-product decay heating), submerged in liquid sodium; (2) to measure the heat flux given up to the sodium parametrically as a function of specific power, bed composition, characterization and depth, and sodium temperature; and (3) to determine the stable regimes of operation of self-heated debris beds, i.e., the regimes in which heat is continuously removed in a nondestructive manner, and in which sodium dryout does not occur. The secondary objectives of the debris bed studies include: (1) development of a 20-kW capacity, fast-responding helium heat-removal loop for in-pile experimentation in the Annular Core Pulse Reactor (ACPR), (2) development of practical analytical descriptions and correlations by which the limited data obtained in-pile may be applied to HCDA and other experiments, and (3) evaluate the implications for the containment of core debris following various HFDA's in current LMFBR designs