Preliminary thermal-hydraulic phenomena investigation during total instantaneous blockage accident for CEFR

The Chinese Experimental Fast Reactor (CEFR) is under installation and commissioning right now. It is essential to investigate core disruptive accidents (CDAs) for the evaluation of CEFR's safety characteristic. As part-I preliminary investigation, accident of total instantaneous blockage (TIB) in single subassembly scale is modeled and analyzed. The degradation scenario has been calculated by a fluid-dynamics analysis code for liquid–metal fast reactors (LMFRs). For further investigation of accident process and influence to the neighboring bundles, seven subassembly domain is then simulated and calculated as part-II investigation. Total instantaneous blockage is assumed to occur in the center subassembly under normal operating conditions and consequences to neighboring assemblies are studied. The result shows that the key events, such as sodium boiling, clad melting, fuel particles relocation, hexcan melt-through and melt propagation into neighboring six assemblies symmetrically are adequately simulated. From comparison and discussion of the CEFR's results with the SCARABEE tests and Superphenix (SPX1)-type reactor simulation, it is concluded that all the key events appear in the same sequence whereas the propagation is limited in neighboring six assemblies. The discrepancy is probably due to less fuel inventory and better cooling capacity in CEFR subassembly design. TIB calculations help to give a better understanding and prediction of hypothetical accident scenario in subassembly blockage accidents for CEFR.