Characteristics of metallic uranium aerosols generated under fire conditions

IF 1.9 3区工程技术 Q1 NUCLEAR SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

Nuclear Engineering and Design Pub Date : 2025-03-31 DOI:10.1016/j.nucengdes.2025.114021

Min Zhu , Ming Guo , Yanjun Wang , Zhaoqun Shao

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

Radioactive aerosol will enter the human body through the respiratory system, digestive system and other ways, seriously endangering human health. At present, there are few public reports on the generation of uranium aerosol under combustion conditions, and the experimental conditions in the existing reports differ greatly, resulting in limited reference significance. Therefore, a set of uranium aerosol experiment equipment is designed in this work, and the formation characteristics of two kinds of metallic uranium aerosol under fire conditions are studied. Thus, the information on the particle size distribution, RF (Respirable Fraction), ARF (Airborne Release Fraction) of uranium aerosols was obtained. The results indicate that particle size of two uranium aerosols exhibited log-normal and bimodal distributions, respectively, while the RF values were similar and close to 1 in both cases. The ARF values for combustion products with different compositions exhibited a high degree of similarity. Based on our experiments and literature data, the results suggests that the particle size distribution of uranium aerosols is influenced by the composition and structure of the material significantly, and the ARF is impacted by the specific surface area of the materials.

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火灾条件下产生的金属铀气溶胶的特性

放射性气溶胶会通过呼吸系统、消化系统等途径进入人体，严重危害人体健康。目前，关于燃烧条件下铀气溶胶生成的公开报道较少，且现有报道的实验条件差异较大，参考意义有限。因此，本工作设计了一套铀气溶胶实验设备，研究了两种金属铀气溶胶在火灾条件下的形成特性。从而获得了铀气溶胶的粒径分布、可吸入分数（RF）、空气释放分数（ARF）等信息。结果表明，两种铀气溶胶的粒径分别表现为对数正态分布和双峰分布，而RF值相似且接近于1。不同成分燃烧产物的ARF值具有高度的相似性。实验结果表明，铀气溶胶的粒径分布受材料组成和结构的显著影响，而ARF受材料比表面积的影响。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Nuclear Engineering and Design 工程技术-核科学技术

CiteScore

3.40

自引率

11.80%

发文量

377

审稿时长

5 months

期刊介绍： Nuclear Engineering and Design covers the wide range of disciplines involved in the engineering, design, safety and construction of nuclear fission reactors. The Editors welcome papers both on applied and innovative aspects and developments in nuclear science and technology. Fundamentals of Reactor Design include: • Thermal-Hydraulics and Core Physics • Safety Analysis, Risk Assessment (PSA) • Structural and Mechanical Engineering • Materials Science • Fuel Behavior and Design • Structural Plant Design • Engineering of Reactor Components • Experiments Aspects beyond fundamentals of Reactor Design covered: • Accident Mitigation Measures • Reactor Control Systems • Licensing Issues • Safeguard Engineering • Economy of Plants • Reprocessing / Waste Disposal • Applications of Nuclear Energy • Maintenance • Decommissioning Papers on new reactor ideas and developments (Generation IV reactors) such as inherently safe modular HTRs, High Performance LWRs/HWRs and LMFBs/GFR will be considered; Actinide Burners, Accelerator Driven Systems, Energy Amplifiers and other special designs of power and research reactors and their applications are also encouraged.