Thermo-Physical Properties of CaO-Fe2O3 Binary Mixture and its Application in the Field of Nuclear Reactor as Simulant Material

The simulant materials play important role in the melt coolability experiments to understand the actual scenarios of core melt accidents in the field of nuclear reactor. Simulant materials are generally oxide/ceramics materials which have the properties similar to the properties of corium (mixture of UO2 , ZrO2 , Zr alloy, Fe, Ni and Cr etc.). This work was carried out to determine the thermo-physical properties of CaO-Fe2O3 binary mixtures of different ratio of CaO and Fe2O3 (23C77F, 26C74F, 29C71F, 32CF68 and 35C65F; here the ratio is in the wt% and C for CaO and F for Fe2O3 ) and compare the properties of CaO-Fe2O3 with the properties of corium. It was observed that the thermo-physical properties of CaO-Fe2O3 binary mixture are close to the properties of corium, so it can be said that this material is simulant material. In this research work, thermal behavior of CaO-Fe2O3 was also carried out using differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). The simulant material CaO-Fe2O3 can be used in the melt coolability experiment to understand the phenomena that happened during the core melt accidents in the nuclear reactor.