COOLABILITY OF SEVERELY DEGRADED CANDU CORES

Analytical and experimental studies have shown that the separately cooled moderator in a CANDU reactor provides an effective heat sink in the event of a loss-of-coolant accident (LOCA) accompanied by total failure of the emergency core cooling system (ECCS). Should the moderator heat sink could fail in such an accident, early studies indicated that the resulting core debris would be retained in the calandria vessel, cooled by the independently …