Thermo-hydraulic instability of natural circulation BWRs at low pressure star-up. Experimental estimation of instability region with test facility considering scaling law

In natural circulation BWRs developed for advanced light water reactors with simplified passive safety systems, thermo-hydraulic stability should be confirmed especially at low pressure start-up. In this paper, nondimensional parameters to estimate the hydrodynamic stability to reactors at low pressure start-up were obtained by transformation of the basic equations of drift-flux model in the two-phase region into nondimensional form. A test facility based on these parameters was then constructed. The height of the test facility is 70% of SBWR and many nondimensional test facility parameters are almost the same as those of the reactor. Reactor stability was estimated experimentally. Stability maps below 0.5MPa were obtained on the heat flux - channel inlet subcooling place. It was found that there were two stability boundaries, between which the flow became unstable. Flow was stable in the high and low channel inlet subcooling regions. Typical conditions of SBWR at low pressure start-up were noted in the high channel inlet subcooling stable region. The heat flux at typical SBWR start-up was about one fifth that of the stability boundary. Though some nondimensional parameters of the test facility did not exactly agree with those of SBWR, it was suggested that the flow in SBWR was stable below 0.5MPa because of the large margin. (author)