Preliminary analysis of quench ‑ 16 experiment with MELCOR 2.1 computer code

The paper is focused on the QUENCH-16 air ingress study. The calculation is performed with recently developed QUENCH-16 model for MELCOR 2.1, which is the last release version of MELCOR. One of the main goals of this study is to validate MELCOR against facility data received while conducting quench air ingression test called QUENCH-16. The other goal of this work was to further study the processes in overheated reactor core and to better understand the oxygen consumption, distribution of temperature field, hydrogen generation, etc. The main purposes of QUENCH-16 test were to examine the oxidation of Zircaloy in air following a limited pre-oxidation in steam and to achieve a long period of oxygen starvation to promote the nitrogen interaction [1]. The proper initial oxidation temperature was selected in performed calculation and the oxidation correlations were modified. Also, the quench model is used during the phase quenching in the calculation. Key words: oxidation, quenching, severe accident