Aerosol material releases from a zircaloy-4 clad UO2 pellet at temperatures up to 2000 degrees Celsius in a flowing argon atmosphere

During some postulated loss of coolant and loss of emergency coolant injection accidents, vapours of fission products and structural (fuel and cladding) materials may be released into steam-hydrogen mixtures flowing in a CANDU fuel channel. These vapours will condense into aerosol particles in the cooler parts of the primary heat transport system. As part of an on-going program to study aerosol formation, transport, deposition and associated fission product retention in the PHTS, experiments were conducted to measure aerosol mass release rates from a Zircaloy-4 clad UO2 pellet inductively heated to temperatures up to 2000 degrees C, in a forced-flow argon environment. A description of these experiments and the obtained results, including fractional mass release rates of structural materials, are presented in this paper