Aerosol Source Term in High Pressure Melt Ejection

Pressurized ejection of melt from a reactor pressure vessel has been identified as an important element of a severe reactor accident. Copious aerosol production is observed when thermitically generated melts pressurized with nitrogen or carbon dioxide to 1.3 to 17 MPa are ejected into an air atmosphere. Aerosol particle size distributions measured in the tests have modes of ∼0.5, 5, and >10 µm. Mechanisms leading to formation of these multimodal size distributions are suggested. This aerosol is a potentially important fission product source term that has not been considered in previous severe accident analyses.