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Latest News
INL researchers use LEDs to shed light on next-gen reactors
At Idaho National Laboratory, researchers have built a bridge between computer models and the lab’s Microreactor Applications Research Validation and Evaluation (MARVEL) microreactor.
Tony Crawford, an INL researcher and MARVEL’s reactivity control system lead, designed a phone booth–sized surrogate nuclear reactor called ViBRANT, or Visual Benign Reactor as Analog for Nuclear Testing, which uses light instead of neutrons to show a “nuclear” reaction.
Ryo Yokoyama, Masahiro Kondo, Shunichi Suzuki, Christophe Journeau, Marco Pellegrini, Koji Okamoto
Nuclear Technology | Volume 210 | Number 5 | May 2024 | Pages 884-905
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2023.2262255
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Accomplishing the retrieval of fuel debris from Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant (1F) Unit 3 (1F3) requires an understanding of its distribution. In this study, we performed real-scale corium spreading and sedimentation behavior analyses using Lagrangian moving particle hydrodynamics and large eddy simulation methods. These methods allowed us to calculate the spreading of corium with various shear viscosities under water conditions and to propose the best estimation for the fuel debris distribution in 1F3. To minimize uncertainties arising from unknown boundary conditions, we investigated relevant parameters through literature review. Our analyses showed that highly viscous corium tends to pile up within the pedestal region under strong convective vapor and boiling heat transfer, while low-viscosity corium spreads to the outside of the pedestal regions regardless of cooling efficiency. We identified three cooling modes based on initial shear viscosity and cooling efficiency and predicted the fuel debris distribution in 1F3 by comparing our results to those of the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) and Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development/Nuclear Energy Agency (OECD/NEA) Benchmark Study of the Accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station (BSAF) project. The distribution estimation of highly viscous corium derived from oxidic corium is consistent with the three-dimensional reconstructed image by TEPCO and the calculated results by the OECD/NEA BSAF project.