Thermochemical Modeling of Metal Composition and Its Impact on the Molten Corium–Concrete Interaction: New Insights with Sensitivity Analysis

The characterization of molten corium–concrete interaction (MCCI) has increasingly become a cause of concern because, in the case of a severe nuclear accident, the core could meltdown and release radiation into the environment. The objective of this study was to determine the thermochemical impact of metal content in the corium and analyze the effect of corium metal content on ablation depth, corium temperature, its viscosity and surface heat flux, and production of hydrogen, carbon monoxide, and carbon dioxide. The governing heat transfer equations were solved while considering the various thermochemical reactions in the existing numerical code in a comprehensive way. The developed MCCI model in CORQUENCH was validated against the data available in the literature. Our findings showed that the composition of corium, especially its metal content, has a noticeable effect on mitigating or aggravating the ablation depth and nuclear reactor integrity. We observed that during molten corium–concrete interaction, zirconium plays a significant role and its presence can increase the ablation depth exponentially from 18.5 to 139 cm in the investigated case study. It was found that the presence of zirconium in the corium instigated various thermochemical reactions continuously, and thus the injected water, instead of quenching the molten corium, enhances the temperature by facilitating exothermic reactions. Additionally, due to the presence of zirconium, the production of hydrogen and carbon monoxide increases by 45 and 52 times, respectively and the generation of carbon dioxide becomes zero because the zirconium reacts with carbon dioxide continuously, converting it to carbon monoxide.