Experimental Study on a Natural Circulation Driven HPLWR

Abstract

The large density change through the core of a supercritical water reactor could be used as the driving force for circulating the coolant. To study such a natural circulation system, a scaled experimental setup was developed using Freon R23. This paper presents the first power-flow measurements for single core heating as well as 3 core heating (HPLWR power distribution) indicating that natural circulation occurs. A numerical model was developed to further study the impact of geometric and system parameters. This model shows good qualitative agreement with the experiment. By further refining the proposed model to include the pressure drop over the heat exchanger, a better quantitative agreement could be obtained.