Study on hydrodynamically induced dryout and post dryout important to heavy water reactors

Recently, the safety of low pressure liquid cooled nuclear reactors has become a very important issue with reference to the operation of the heavy water reactors at Savannah River Plant. Under accident conditions such as loss-of-flow or loss-of-coolant, these reactors typically encounter unstable two-phase flow which may lead to the occurrence of dryout and subsequent fuel failure. An analytical study using the one-dimensional drift flux model was carried out to investigate the two-phase flow instability for Westinghouse Savannah River Site reactor. The analysis indicates that the first and higher order instabilities exist in the possible transient operational conditions. The instabilities are encountered at higher heat fluxes or lower flow rates. The subcooling has a stabilizing effect except at very low subcooling. An experimental loop has been designed and constructed. A study was conducted on the CHF induced by various flow instabilities. Details of this test loop are presented