Hydrogen Distribution in Nuclear Reactor Containment During Accidents and Associated Heat and Mass Transfer Issues—A Review

Abstract

AbstractHydrogen generation during the progression of an accident in a nuclear reactor and its release into the containment comprise an important safety concern in the management of severe accidents in nuclear power plants. The distribution of hydrogen within the containment has important bearing on possibility, mode, and consequence of combustion in the containment. Hence, several small- and large-scale facilities have been built to study the distribution of released hydrogen. Further, several numerical studies and intercomparison exercises on hydrogen distribution have been carried out. The present review summarizes the experimental and numerical studies on hydrogen distribution and suggests opportunities for further studies. ACKNOWLEDGMENTThe authors express their sincere gratitude to the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board for its support of the hydrogen safety program at the AERB-Safety Research Institute, Kalpakkam, and the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, Chennai-36.Additional informationNotes on contributorsNilesh AgrawalNilesh Agrawal is a scientist at the Safety Research Institute, Atomic Energy Regulatory Board, Government of India. He received his B.Tech. and M.Tech. from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, in 2000 and 2006 and his Ph.D. from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, India, in 2013. He has 11 years of industry and research experience and has published 15 research papers in reputed international journal and conferences. His research interests include computational fluid dynamics, heat and mass transfer, nuclear reactor thermal hydraulics, hydrogen distribution and mitigation, reactor safety, and severe accident management.Aneesh PrabhakarAneesh Prabhakar is a Ph.D. scholar at Heat Transfer and Thermal Power Laboratory, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Madras, India. He received his M.Tech. in thermal sciences from National Institute of Technology Calicut, Kerala, India, in 2010 and B.Tech. in mechanical engineering from Sree Chitra Thirunal College of Engineering, Pappanamcode, Thiruvananthapuram, University of Kerala, India, in 2008. Currently, he is working on the experimental and numerical analysis of the hydrogen–steam–air mixture distribution in AIHMS.Sarit K. DasSarit K. Das is a professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and the Dean, Academic Research at Indian Institute of Technology Madras. He has published four books and more than 200 research papers. He is the editor-in-chief of Inter-national Journal of Micro-Nano Scale Transport and also an associate editor of Journal of Heat Transfer Engineering. His research interests include heat transfer in nanofluids, microfluidics, biological heat transfer, nanoparticle-mediated drug delivery in cancer cells, heat exchangers, boiling in mini-/microchannels, fuel cells, jet instabilities, heat transfer in porous media, and computational fluid dynamics. He is a recipient of the DAAD and Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship of Germany. He is a fellow of the Indian National Academy of Engineering and National Academy of Sciences, India. He is a recipient of the Thomson Reuters Research Excellence—India Citation Awards 2012 based on citation impact analysis conducted by Thomson Reuters. He was awarded the Peabody Visiting Professorship at the Mechanical Engineering Department of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Cambridge, MA), 2011.