A review of research progress in heat exchanger tube rupture accident of heavy liquid metal cooled reactors

The Heat eXchanger Tube Rupture (HXTR) accident, which is also called Steam Generator Tube Rupture (SGTR) accident, is important and should be considered as a safety issue in the design and safety assessment of Heavy Liquid Metal (HLM) cooled reactors. The HLM cooled reactor is a kind of advanced reactor which is meaningful for sustainable energy development. In this paper, the research progress on HXTR (or SGTR) accident of HLM cooled reactors from 1992 to 2016 is reviewed. Currently, because of the restrictions of experimental facilities and simulation tools for HXTR accident, the main phenomena, which should be concerned, were not all well studied. For experimental research, the most studied problems were the investigations of the pressure evolution, vapor transmission, fragmentation behavior, physics of the thermal and hydraulic interactions between HLM and water; And for simulation research, the pressure evolution and steam transmission were the mostly studied. For further research of HXTR accident of HLM cooled reactors, the propagation of the pressure waves and sloshing of the primary coolant pool with mechanical impact of the heavy liquid metal on structures should be more studied. And as the basis, the experimental facilities and numerical tools for HXTR accident should be improved firstly.