Understanding and Prediction of Thermal Hydraulics Phenomena Relevant to Supercritical Water Cooled Reactors

The supercritical water cooled reactor (SCWR) is one of the innovative water cooled reactor (WCR) concepts mainly for large scale production of electricity. By utilizing its high coolant temperature, the SCWR is expected to achieve much higher thermal efficiencies than those of current WCRs, and thereby promise improved economics. The objective of the CRP is to improve the understanding and prediction accuracy of thermal hydraulics phenomena relevant to SCWRs and to benchmark numerical toolsets for their analysis. Several key phenomena, such as heat transfer, pressure drop and flow stability, have been identified as crucial to the successful development of SCWRs. This CRP will enhance understanding of thermal hydraulics phenomena, sharing of experimental and analytical results, prediction methods for key thermal hydraulics parameters, and cross-training of personnel between participating institutes.