An Experimental Investigation on APR1400 Penetration Weld Failure by Metallic Melt

The penetrations are considered as the most vulnerable parts with respect to the reactor vessel failure when a core melt severe accident occurs and the corium reaches the lower head. Penetration tube failure modes can be divided into two categories; tube ejection out of the vessel lower head and rupture of the penetration tube outside the vessel. Tube ejection begins with degrading the penetration tube weld strength to zero as the weld is exposed to temperatures as high as the weld melting temperature, which is called weld failure, and then overcoming any binding force in the hole in the vessel wall that results from differential thermal expansion of the tube and vessel wall. Tube rupture assumes that the debris bed has melted the instrument tube inside the reactor and melt migrates down into the tube to a location outside the vessel wall where a pressure rupture can occur, thus breaching the pressure boundary. In the present paper, we have a focus on the tube ejection failure mode, specifically on the APR1400 weld failure by direct contact with a metallic melt. The objective is to investigate experimentally the ablation kinetics of an APR1400 penetration weld during the interactions with a metallic melt and to suggest the modification of the existing weld failure model. This paper involves the interaction experiments of two different metallic melts (metallic corium and stainless steel melts) with a weld specimen, and rough estimation of weld failure time. The interaction experiments between the metallic melts and an APR1400 penetration weld were performed to investigate the ablation kinetics of the penetration weld. Metallic corium and stainless steel melts were generated using an induction heating technique and interacted with a penetration weld specimen. The ablation rate of the weld specimen showed a range from 0.109 to 0..244 mm/s and thus the APR1400 penetration weld was estimated to be failed at hundreds of times after the interaction with the melt.