| CANDU reactors are pressurized heavy-water moderated and cooled reactor designs. During commissioning of nuclear power plants a range of possible accidents must be considered to assure the plants' robust design. Consider a complete channel blockage in the CANDU reactor. Such an extreme flow blockage event would result in fuel overheating, pressure tube failure, partial melting of fuel rods and possible molten fuel-moderator interactions (MFMI). The MFMI phenomenon would occur immediately after tube rupture, and would involve a mixture of steam, hydrogen and molten fuel being ejected into the surrounding moderator water in the form of a high-pressure vapor bubble mixture. This bubble mixture would accelerate the surrounding denser water, causing interfacial mixing due to hydrodynamic instabilities at the interface. As a result of these interfacial instabilities, water is entrained into the growing two-phase bubble mixture with the attendant mass and heat transfer; e.g., water vaporization, fuel oxidation.;A comprehensive model is developed to investigate these complex phenomena resulting from a postulated complete flow blockage and complete pressure tube failure. This dynamic model serves as a baseline to characterize the pressure response due to a pressure tube rupture and the associated MFMI phenomena. Theoretical modeling of these interrelated complex phenomena is not known a priori and therefore a semi-empirical approach is adopted. Consequently, experimental work is being proposed as part of the thesis work to verify key hypotheses regarding these interfacial fluid instabilities, such as the entrainment fraction into the rapidly expanding bubble. |
