KAEVER: experiments on an improved understanding of aerosol behaviour in reactor containments

KAEVER is an experimental program to investigate the influences of size distribution, morphology, composition and solubility on the aerosol behaviour under various thermohydraulic conditions simulating the accident situation in LWR-containments. The KAEVER facility consists of a 10 m3 containment vessel, an aerosol generation system with two independent inductive furnaces and a sophisticated aerosol instrumentation. The research program includes experiments to the generation of single and multicomponent insoluble (SnO2, Ag) and soluble (CsOH, CsI, NaCI) core melt aerosol simulants and investigates the aerosol agglomeration and deposition behaviour in the containment vessel under various thermohydraulic conditions. The experiments are supported by thermohydraulic and aerosol codes. The applied aerosol measurement equipment i.e. an aerosol photometer, a differential mobility analyzer, low pressure impactors, an optical particle counter, an aerodynamic particle sizer and filtration and deposition devices, provides data on particle size distribution, shape, concentration, and on the elemental composition. Particle size ranges from 0.01 μm up to 50 μm. (orig.) (6 refs., 1 fig., 1 tab.)