LMFBR aerosol release and transport program. Quarterly progress report, January--March 1979

This report summarizes progress for the Liquid-Metal Fast Breeder Reactor (LMFBR) Aerosol Release and Transport (ART) Program sponsored by the Division of Reactor Safety Research of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) for the period January--March 1979. This program is designed to investigate radionuclide release and transport from LMFBRs for reactor events of severity up to and including hypothetical core-disruptive accidents (HCDAs). Program topics discussed include recent capacitor discharge vaporization (CDV) tests in the Fuel Aerosol Simulant Test (FAST)/Containment Research Installation (CRI-III) facility, including underwater and vacuum tests in the CRI-III vessel; fuel-oxide tests in the Nuclear Safety Pilot Plant (NSPP) using a newly installed dc plasma metal-oxygen torch; fuel-oxide aerosol size measurements using two different instruments in the CRI-II facility, and calculated results of average size and number of primary particles per aerosol agglomerate; an evaluation of the HAARM-3 code fallout model using NSPP data; and the development of a simple analytical method to estimate the buoyancy-induced air velocity in the NSPP tests.