EXPERIMENTAL AND NUMERICAL INVESTIGATIONS ON THE ESBWR STABILITY PERFORMANCE

ROHDE, M.; MARCEL CHRISTIAN PABLO; MANERA, A.; VAN DER HAGEN, T.H.J.J.; SHIRALKAR, B.S.

NUCLEAR REACTOR THERMAL HYDRAULICS. INTERNATIONAL MEETING. 12TH 2007. (5 VOLS) NURETH 12

American Nuclear Society

Lugar: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Año: 2007; p. 1020 - 1041

In this work, the stability of the Economic Simplified Boiling Water Reactor (ESBWR) has beenstudied by using a Freon-134a based experimental facility (GENESIS) and two system codes,being ATHLET 2.0a and (to a lesser extent) TRACG. During setting up the GENESIS facilityand the numerical calculations, a great effort has been made to approximate the ESBWR systemas accurate as possible.In general, it was found that a sufficient margin to instability exists regarding the ESBWR’snominal point. In addition, a comparison was made between the numerical and experimentalresults for both the thermal-hydraulic system and the reactor system. Deviations were foundbetween the numerical and experimental results, in spite of the close similarity between theGENESIS facility and the definition of the ESBWR system in the system code. This result showsthat predictions regarding real nuclear reactors, based on modeled systems, should be taken withcare.