Chen X.-N., Li R., Rineiski A.
Institute for Nuclear and Energy Technologies (IKET), Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Karlsruhe, Germany
This paper gives first a short review of blockage accident investigations in heavy liquid metal cooled reactors carried out in the past in the transmutation group at KIT and then surveys the possibility of the subchannel flow simulation by SIMMER-III. A macroscopic differential model of the rod bundle flow is set up and implemented in SIMMER-III. A steady state of subchannel flow, which is approximately axially symmetric, but significantly non-uniform in the radial direction, is investigated and compared with a subchannel code. Finally the subchannel blockage initiating from the central channels is considered and simulated. The scenario of the pin failure and fuel swept-out is expected, but it takes place by only 50% area blockage in the central subchannel rings for the MYRRHA reactor a ccording to our current SIMMER-III subchannel numerical simulation.
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