Experimental study on the plate-type fuel melting behavior based on alternative materials

• Published in: Annals of nuclear energy 2025-02, Vol.211, p.110941, Article 110941
• Main Authors: Wu, Zhiyuan, Li, Kepiao, Zhang, Kui, Chen, Ronghua, Tian, Wenxi, Qiu, Suizheng
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Blistering; Melting; Plate-type fuel; Severe accidents
• ISSN: 0306-4549
• DOI: 10.1016/j.anucene.2024.110941

•A visualized experimental bench for the melting behavior of plate-type fuel has been designed and built.•The key parameters such as blistering position, blistering size, breaking position and breaking size have been obtained which can provide data support for the development and verification of the program.•The influence of experimental environment and size of the fuel plate on the characteristics of fuel melting has been studied. In this paper, low-temperature experiments are carried out on the visualized experimental device to study the melting behavior of plate-type fuel in severe accidents of the reactor. In the experiments, the plate-type fuel with different sizes made of nickel–chromium alloy, zinc and aluminum was used to carry out the visualized experiments in air, argon, and vacuum environment. It was found that both the size of the plate and the experimental environment have a significant influence on the melting behavior in this study. And the temperature distribution, melting behavior characteristic, the key parameters such as blistering position, blistering size, breaking position and breaking size were also obtained. Based on the experimental data, the physical phenomena and processes related to the blistering and melting of the fuel plates are analyzed in this paper, which provides experimental data support for the development of analysis model and formulating perfect mitigation strategies for severe accidents.