Air Ingress Accident in a High Temperature Reactor with Prismatic Fuel

In this paper, the safety behavior of the new generation high temperature reactors (HTRs) with prismatic fuels during air ingress accident conditions has been investigated. These reactors conceived primarily for the production of hydrogen, are characterized by their inherent safety features with respect to passive decay heat removal through conduction, radiation and natural convection. Air ingress is an HTR specific event. The potential threat posed by air ingress lies in the chemical reaction of oxygen with hot graphite at a temperature above 500 °C leading to reaction heat and graphite corrosion. A substantial amount of graphite burn-off can take place only if sufficient amount of air enters into the core. In order to better assess the phenomena of air ingress into the reactor, it is postulated that breaks are present above and below the reactor core and that unobstructed ingress of air through them is possible. It is obvious that the air ingress incident has to be preceded by a depressurization accident. For this hypothetical scenario the maximum possible air flow rate through the core resulting solely from the pressure losses in the core is determined as a function of the break cross sections exposed above and below the core. This paper demonstrates the thermal behavior of the ANTARES reactor (operating inlet/outlet temperatures 450/850 °C) for various air flow rates with respect to graphite burn-off and maximum temperatures of fuel and bottom reflector region. It indicates the limiting time at which the graphite layer of fuel will be completely burnt-off and the pellets exposed.