Spent Fuel Pool Project Phase 1: Pre-Ignition and Ignition Testing of a Single Commercial 17x17 Pressurized Water Reactor Spent Fuel Assembly under Complete Loss of Coolant Accident Conditions (NUREG/CR-7215)

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Publication Information

Manuscript Completed: July 2013
Date Published: April 2016

Prepared by:
S.G. Durbin, E.R. Lindgren and A.S. Goldmann
Sandia National Laboratories
Albuquerque, NM 87185

M. Zavisca, Z. Yuan, R. Karimi, A. Krall, and M. Khatib-Rahbar
Energy Research, Inc.
Rockville, MD 20847-2034

G. A. Zigh, NRC Technical Monitor
A. Velazquez-Lozada, NRC Project Manager
S. Gonzalez, NRC Project Manager

NRC Job Code N6777

Office of Nuclear Regulatory Research
U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission
Washington DC 20555-0001

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Abstract

The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), in collaboration with the Organization for Economic Corporation and Development (OECD), and 12 international partners, conducted an experimental program to obtain experimental data for the characterization of hydraulic and ignition phenomena of prototypic light water reactor fuel assemblies in a spent fuel pool under complete loss of coolant accidents for validation of the MELCOR severe accident computer code. MELCOR is a fully integrated, engineering-level computer code whose primary purpose is to model the progression of postulated accidents in light water reactors as well as non-reactor systems (e.g., spent fuel pool and dry cask). The experimental program, were conducted in two phases at Sandia National Laboratories. The first phase, described in this NUREG, focused on axial heating and zirconium fire propagation in a single 17x17 PWR fuel assembly. The results from the first phase of the experiments demonstrate that the MELCOR computer code can accurately simulate ignition timing and burn propagation in a single 17x17 PWR assembly under complete loss of coolant conditions.