This paper is devoted to the creation of an information and analytical system (IAS) which is under development to manage the data obtained in experiments and investigations to justify the safety of atomic energy, which the National Nuclear Center of the Republic of Kazakhstan (RSE NNC RK) has been conducting for over 30 years. The main components of the IAS determining its consumer capabilities is an analytical unit that will allow the creation of programs for planned experiments in view of the technical requirements for them and based on the results of previous experiments, generalized and consolidated by processing and comparison tools provided by the IAS. An important component of the IAS is a set of tools for the predictive calculation of the temperature of materials of test sections depending on a given change in the power of energy release in them, predictive calculation of the required power of energy release in materials depending on a given change in their temperature, formation of arrays of experimental information in digital format and graphical form, comparison of experiments and their data among themselves, and the formation of protocols of experiments with the possibility of choosing specific data and methods for their processing. It should be noted that the created IAS greatly simplifies the preparation for experiments.

This paper presents the results of computational and physical studies on the production of corium and its retention in an MR’s melt trap of the Lava-B facility. A feature of the Lava-B facility used in the IAE NNC RK to study the processes occurring during a severe accident at a nuclear reactor, is the separation of the stages of the reactor core corium formation and its interaction with structural materials. The melting of materials takes place in an induction furnace with a hot crucible, after which it moves to a melt receiver (MR) in which the test object is located. In the case of studies of processes occurring outside the reactor vessel, this is a special trap, which is placed in the inductor to simulate decay heat. However, based on the conservative computational estimates, it was found that the inductor power in the MR can be sufficient to directly produce, melt, and, subsequently, maintain the corium in the liquid phase. In this regard, in order to optimize the experiments under controlled conditions, the authors came up with the idea to experimentally test the possibility of producing corium by induction heating directly in the MR’s melt trap. In addition, according to the authors, this method would obviate the problem of corium contact with the carbon environment of the melting furnace of the Lava-B facility. Previously, burden heating simulating corium was modeled on the computer using available parameters of the MR’s induction heater. Based on the numerical experiment, the conditions for physical modeling of the corium production in the MR’s melt trap were established. An analysis of the physical modeling showed that during the burden heating in the melt trap, its metal components became liquid, thus, forming a melt pool. However, in terms of this design of the trap, there were problems associated with the complete melting of all corium components, as well as with the integrity of the experimental device when forming the corium pool and during the actual physical modeling.

Most commonly, in consequence of a severe accident at a nuclear power plant(NPP) followedby a meltdown of the reactor core, corium is formed. Decay heat is one of the features of it andhighly affectsthe thermal field of the entire corium. Thus, takinginto account the decay heat is a central tophysical modelingof severe accidents. For this reason, methods for simulating decay heatmust meet at least two requirements of physical modeling: intensity and uniformity of heating throughout the entire volume of the melt.This paper provides studies on the efficiencyof using ohmic heating as a method for simulating decay heatin a corium prototype during experiments at the LAVA-B test-bench. Melt heating data using an ohmic heater was obtained by computer modeling based on a software packageANSYS. To assess the efficiencyof using ohmic heating, the obtained calculation parameters were compared with the parameters of other existing methods for simulating decay heatin the melt under similar conditions, such as induction heating and plasmatron heating.