Oxidation Heat Rate Given the masses of materials in the TMI

Oxidation Heat Rate: Given the masses of materials in the TMI-2 core as shown below, show that the oxidation rate in the core could potentially exceed the decay heat rate. State any assumptions in your calculation. I am just starting nuclear engineering and have not been given any formulas to solve this problem and have no idea where to begin. Any help would be greatly appreciated. I guess I would need to know the oxidation rate and decay heat rate equations as a function of mass.

TABLE 2.1 Masses of the Materials in the Reactor Cone Weight (kg) Core Materials Fuel rod materials Uranium Zirconium Tin Oxygen 82,810 23,200 370 11,300 Control materials Silver Indium Cadmium 2,199 412 137 Structural materials Iron Chromium Nickel Molybdenum 3,400 1,110 1,046 36 3,600 Miscellaneous Total 129,700

Solution

The decay heat rate and oxidation rate of the nuclear reactor materials cannot be studied unless the reactor\'s information like the dimensions of control rods, coolants, reaction rate etc, is known. However, the oxidation rate exceeding the decay rate is one of the reasons for a nuclear meltdown that happens in a nuclear reactor. Then again it needs lots of information to be studied, the masses of the core materials won\'t be enough and no equation for oxidation rate and especially decay rate can be known in terms of only their mass.