POMECO: POrous MEdia COolability
POMECO test facilities were concerned with coolability quantification of debris beds formed in a hypothetical severe accident of light water reactors (LWRs), when the molten corium is relocated into a water pool, fragmenting and forming a particulate debris bed on the water pool bottom for both in-vessel and ex-vessel scenarios.
The POMECO-FL facility (Fig.1a & Fig.2a) was designed to investigate adiabatic air/water single/two-phase flow characteristics in particulate beds. The focus of the on-going research on the facility is to obtain the effective particle diameter and the two-phase flow friction law of a particulate bed which has some characteristics of the prototypical debris bed, such as packed with particles of multiple sizes and irregular shapes.
The POMECO-HT test facility (Fig.1b & Fig.2b) is constructed to investigate the coolability of a particulate bed which has some characteristics of a prototypical debris bed formed in a severe accident of light water reactors (LWRs), such as packed with multi-sized and irregular particles. The facility features flexibility of reconfiguration and a maximum heat flux of 2.1 MW/m2, which enable coolability investigation on various beds of a broad range of particles with either top-flooding or bottom-fed schemes. The facility is also well instrumented with two differential pressure transducers installed to measure the pressure drops. The bed can be quenched from top by an overlying water pool and from bottom by using downcomers or forced injection of water.
