In the context of the sustainable use of nuclear energy to produce carbon-free electricity, fourth-generation reactors, also known as 'fast neutron' reactors, are necessary to close the fuel cycle.
This thesis falls within the framework of safety studies associated with such sodium-cooled reactors, and more particularly the hypothetical situation of a molten core relocating by gravity towards the core catcher at the bottom of the reactor vessel. A jet of corium (mixture of molten fuel and structural elements of the core) then interacts violently with the coolant, inducing, among other things, the fragmentation of the corium jet into droplets coupled with film boiling of the coolant. Characteristics of the resulting dispersed phase of corium and its fragmentation are crucial for studying the risk of runaway and steam explosion.
The aim of this thesis is to model a dispersed phase and its fragmentation in a surrounding fluid, using an approach that is both efficient and able to account to the scale variations and thermal imbalances between the droplets and the carrier phase. The method considered to meet these objectives is the method of moments, which derives from a kinetic model. It requires adequate closure and numerical schemes that satisfy non-standard constraints, while offering, in return, a crucial cost/accuracy compromise in the context studied. The advancements will be a priori implemented in the CFD software SCONE, built on the CEA's open-source TRUST platform.
The main work location will be based at the LMAG (Laboratory of Severe Accidents Modeling) at the IRESNE Institute of CEA Cadarache. Part of the work will also be carried out at the EM2C Laboratory (Molecular and Macroscopic Energetics, Combustion) – CNRS/CentraleSupélec in Paris.
The future PhD will work in a scientific dynamic environment and will acquire skills enabling to aspire to academic and industrial R&D positions.

Keywords : Dispersed Phase, Fragmentation, Kinetic, Method of Moments, Multiphase, Numerical methods, Severe Accidents.