Abstract
A containment spray system is used to mitigate the source term from the containment building to the environment as part of the severe accident management actions. Tellurium is one of the volatile fission products and many of the tellurium isotopes decay into iodine, which causes a threat to the public due to its radiotoxicity and build-up in the thyroid gland. The removal efficiency of the containment spray system model against tellurium species formed under severe accident conditions was investigated with experiments and MELCOR simulations. The results indicated efficient removal of tellurium aerosols in the air atmosphere, whereas a decrease in the efficiency was observed in the nitrogen atmosphere. Gaseous tellurium species were not formed in significant amounts during the experiments and therefore, the removal efficiency due to different spray chemistry conditions could not be accurately analysed. However, the alkaline chemicals used in the spray solution seemed to form airborne particles, increasing the overall aerosol transport in the process independently of CsI or Te aerosol transport.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 108622 |
| Journal | Annals of Nuclear Energy |
| Volume | 164 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 15 Dec 2021 |
| MoE publication type | A1 Journal article-refereed |
Funding
This work was funded by NKS (Nordic Nuclear Safety Research), SAFIR2022 (The Finnish Research Programme on Nuclear Power Plant Safety 2019-2022), APRI-10 (Accident Phenomena of Risk Importance, Swedish nuclear safety research). Irradiations in the LVR-15 reactor were carried out at the CANAM infrastructure of the NPI CAS Řež supported through MŠMT project No. LM2015056) and with the use of infrastructure Reactors LVR-15 and LR-0, which is financially supported by the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports - project LM2018120. The authors would like to thank Jan Kučera in the Research Centre Řež, Ltd. for the INAA measurements and analysis.