Experiments of loss of coolant in the IEA-R1 reactor

Abstract

The Loss of Coolant Accident (LOCA) has been considered Design Basis Accident (DBA) for several kind of reactors. The test section for experimental (STAR) for simulation of LOCA, using the Instrumented Fuel Assembly (IFA) EC-208 was designed, assembled, commissioned, and used for the experiments at the IEA-R1 Reactor. The experiments were performed for five different levels of fuel uncovering and two heat decay conditions. The five levels consisted of one total and four partial uncovering of the IFA. The results obtained for each experiment were the section level and 13 IFA temperatures. A data acquisition system was used to record the process parameters. The STAR section has proved to be a very safe and efficient tool for fuel uncovering experiments to obtain thermal-hydraulic data for research and development, and for the data to be compared with safety analysis code calculations.