Experimental and Numerical Simulation on Hydraulic Behavior of Molten Flow in the Lower Part in Reactor Core

In the decommissioning work of nuclear power plants, it is important to grasp the sedimentation place of molten materials. However, the technique to grasp exactly sedimentation place is not established now. Therefore, the detailed and phenomenological numerical simulation code named JUPITER for predicting the molten core behavior is developed. In the study, visualization experiment and numerical simulation were performed to validate the applicability of the JUPITER to the hydraulic relocation behavior in core internals. The test section used in this experiment simulated the structure of the core internals, such as a control rod and a fuel support piece, simply. The working fluid is water under the atmospheric pressure. The experiment uses a high-speed video camera to visualize the flow behavior. The behavior and the speed of the liquid film in a narrow flow channel is obtained. For the numerical analysis carried out prior to the experiment, the behavior of flow down liquid was shown. The typical behavior was also observed that the tip of a liquid film flowing down splits into.