Natural circulation and stability performance of BWRs (NACUSP)

From the beginning of BWR technology it was realized that a BWR can become unstable under particular circumstances caused by a feedback between the thermal-hydraulics and the neutronics. This instability can result in oscillations of the power and the flow rate, which is an unwanted phenomenon. The NACUSP project addresses the stability issues in current and future BWRs by expanding the basic understanding through well structured testing and analyses of experimental data, by analyses of existing operational stability data from three different European reactors (Forsmark, Leibstadt, Cofrentes), by applying this knowledge via efficient models and validated computer codes to operating reactors and reactor designs, and by developing general guidelines for reactor operation and design on how to avoid BWR instabilities. In order to cover the parameter range as efficiently as possible, four existing, sophisticated thermohydraulic test facilities (CLOTAIRE [Gouirand, J.M., 1988. CLOTAIRE Program, description and manufacturing of the mock-up, CEA Cadarache, DRE/STRE/LGV 88–876.] DESIRE [van de Graaf, R., van der Hagen, T.H.J.J., Mudde, R.F., 1994. Two-phase flow scaling laws for a simulated BWR assembly. Nucl. Eng. Des. 148, 455–462.] CIRCUS [de Kruijf, W.J.M., van der Hagen, T.H.J.J., Mudde, R.F., 2000. CIRCUS; a natural circulation two-phase flow facility, Eurotherm Seminar No. 63, 6–8 September 1999 Genoa, Italy, 391–395] and PANDA [Dreier, J., Huggenberger, M., Aubert, C., Bandurski, T., Fischer, O., Healzer, J., Lomperski, S., Strassberger, H.-J., Varadi, G., Yadigaroglu, G., 1996. The PANDA facility and first test results, Kerntechnik 61, 214–222]) have been selected. To extrapolate from small-scale separate-effect testing conditions to full-scale integral reactor conditions one needs to rely on the performance of computer codes (MONA [Hoyer, N., 1994. MONA, a 7-Equation Transient two-phase flow model for LWR dynamics, Proceedings of the International Conference on New Trends in Nuclear System Thermohydraulics, pp. 271–280], ATHLET [Krepper, E., Prasser, H.-M., 1999. Natural circulation experiments at the ISB-VVER integral test facility and calculations using the thermal-hydraulic code ATHLET. Nucl. Technol. 128, 75–86], RAMONA-3(-5) [Grandi, G., Hoyer, N., Belblidia, L., 1998. Two-fluid thermal hydraulics capabilities of RAMONA-5, Proceedings of the International Conference on the Physics of Nuclear Science and Technology, October 5–8, 1998, Long Island, NY,