Wastage Behavior of Modified 9Cr-1Mo Steel Tube Material by Sodium-Water Reaction (II)

The Korea Advanced LIquid MEtal Reactor (KALIMER) steam generator is a helical coil, vertically oriented, shell-and-tube type heat exchanger with fixed tube-sheet. The conceptual design and outline drawing of the steam generator are shown. Flow is counter-current, with sodium on the shell side and water/steam on the tube side. Sodium flow enters the steam generator through the upper inlet nozzles and then flows down through the tube bundle. Feedwater enters the steam generator through the feedwater nozzles at the bottom of steam generator. Therefore, if there is a hole or a crack in a heat transfer tube, a leakage of water/steam into the sodium may occur, resulting in a sodium-water reaction. When such a leak occurs, so-called 'wastage' is the result which may cause damage to or a failure of the adjacent tubes. If a steam generator is operated for some time in this condition, it is possible that it might create an intermediate leak state which would then give rise to the problems of a multi-target wastage in a very short time. Therefore, it is very important to predict these phenomena quantitatively from the view of designing a steam generator and its leak detection systems. The objective of this study is a basic investigating of the sodium-water reaction phenomena by small water/steam leaks. For this, wastage tests for modified 9Cr-1Mo steel tube material were conducted, and an empirical formula of the wastage rate for this material was obtained from the results