Among the new safety features of a future European sodium cooled fast breeder the potential use of discharge tubes and a core-catcher is studied. In case of use of the discharge tubes, the possibility of the impact of a coherent jet onto the core-catcher cannot be ruled out. If it happens substantial ablation can occur. The work presented here aims at enhancing the understanding of the ablation of a solid by a hot liquid jet in this context. To tackle this issue, hot water and transparent ice

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... e used. This allows the real-time tracking of the ablation front which has never been done before. The preliminary results presented here demonstrate the relevance of this approach. It has been confirmed that several regimes of ablation exist and that the ablation rate during the first one is constant. Future developments are forseen to push the analysis beyond and get closer to the industrial case.