Heat Transfer Characteristics of Sodium-Water Reaction Jet around a Tube in Steam Generator of Sodium-Cooled Fast Reactor

Abstract

Overheating tube rupture of adjacent tubes arises from water/steam leak in steam generators of sodium-cooled fast reactors. It is very important to predict the tube wall stress (tube wall temperature) with a high degree of accuracy on evaluation of overheating tube rupture, and is crucial to estimate quantitatively the heat transfer coefficient between reaction jet and adjacent tubes which is one of the major influencing factor. The authors carried out the sodium-water reaction test (SWAT-1R) under the simulated operation condition of a real plant, and measured the correlation between heat transfer coefficient and void fraction around an adjacent tube. The authors confirmed that thermal environment around an adjacent tube was inferable from measured data, and heat transfer correlation equation proposed by Hamada et al. was applicable to the operation condition at elevated pressure and temperature.