Abstract:
An experimental study was performed to understand the interaction mechanism and the thermal shock effect of the molten oxide and metallic cavity, when the reactor pressure vessel failure occurred in the core molten accident for the marine nuclear propulsion reactor. In this work, a scaled metallic cavity test section was designed on the basis of similarity criterion for the heat transfer progress, the zirconium oxide was melted at around 2 700 ℃ by using the cold crucible technique, and then the molten zirconium oxide was discharged into the metallic cavity. The temperature and deformation response characteristics and main influencing factors of the metallic cavity under thermal shock were obtained and studied. The experimental results show that the peak temperature of the metallic cavity caused by thermal shock is 601 ℃ and the maximum plastic deformation is 0.44 mm, neither thermal failure nor structural failure occurrs, and the integrity of the metallic cavity can be maintained in the early stage. The experimental results infer that the material, the structure and the coolant heat transfer conditions for the marine nuclear propulsion reactor are more conducive to maintaining the integrity of the metallic cavity, and the failure of the metallic cavity in the early stage is a very low probability event.