Improvement of steam separator in boiling water reactors

The potential to improve the function of the steam separator is identified and explored by scaled air-water tests and validated CFD calculations. It can be outlined that requirements on a modern steam separator for BWR plants will be fulfilled, combined with very good operational experience of the existing separator designs (e.g. material, layout). With the new steam separator design, modern high performance fuel assembly designs can be used for various core loading strategies (e.g. low leakage). This allows an increased thermal power of up to +50 % for the fuel element clusters in the center of the core with high radial peaking factors. In addition, any problems with unallowable high moisture at the turbine are solved with the new design, which have been identified for running BWR plants with the old steam separator design after applying new core loading patterns (e.g. after power uprates). A compatible steam separator design for all running BWRs is ready to launch. (orig.)