The Physical Mechanism of Core-Wide and Local Instabilities at the Forsmark-1 BWR

During the last 15 years, the problem of BWR instabilities has attracted the attention of a number of researchers. From the theoretical point of view, one would be interested in physically understanding the mechanisms responsible for the in- and out-of-phase core wide power oscillations observed at certain operating points of the power-flow map in different BWRs. From the practical point of view, one must try to avoid these 'incidents' since either locally, or globally, the power may substantially exceed the prescribed levels. In this work, we shall use RAMONA3-12 and analyse a rather unusual instability incident at Forsmark-1 in which in addition to the core-wide fundamental spatial mode oscillation, there were local large amplitude power oscillations at different radial positions in the core. We were able to reproduce these unusual experimental findings by assuming that there are large amplitude Density Wave Oscillations (DWOs) in different bundles, induced by the fact that these bundles were not seated properly into the lower fuel support plate. (author)