Experimental activities on stratification and mixing of a gas mixture under the conditions of a severe accident with intervention of mitigating measures performed in the ERCOSAM-SAMARA project

Abstract

International audienceThe ERCOSAM-SAMARA project is based on severe accident scenarios involving large amounts of hydrogen leading to explosive atmospheres. A generic scenario was scaled down according to the facilities involved in the project TOSQAN from IRSN, SPOT from JSC Afrikantov OKBM, MISTRA from CEA and PANDA from PSI. Each scenario is divided into two sequences. The first one is dedicated to the establishment of the hydrogen explosive atmosphere. The second one consists in the impacts of different mitigation means namely spray, cooler or thermal effects of passive auto-catalytic recombiner (Heater device). Tests dedicated to spray system were not performed in SPOT and to cooler not in TOSQAN. Heater mitigation means was investigated in MISTRA and PANDA. Thus, an amount of fourteen tests were performed in the project. In this paper we present the experimental work performed in each facility as well as an overview of the experimental results