First Experiments at the CIGMA Facility for Investigations of LWR Containment Thermal Hydraulics

There has been an extensive reorientation of the light water reactor (LWR) research in Japan since the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power station (NPS) accident, which focuses on severe accidents and accident managements. The Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA) initiated the ROSA-SA project in 2013 for the purpose of studying thermal hydraulics relevant to over-temperature containment damage, hydrogen risk, and fission product transport. For this purpose, the JAEA newly constructed the Containment InteGral Measurement Apparatus (CIGMA) in 2015 for the experiments addressing containment responses, separate effects, and accident managements. Recently, we successfully conducted first experiments using CIGMA to characterize the facility under typical experimental conditions investigating basic phenomena such as buildup of pressure by steam injection, containment cooling and depressurization by internal or external cooling, and density stratified layer mixing by impinging jet. This paper provides an overview of the research programs, the brief description of the facility specification and the outcomes obtained from the first experiments.