Small Inlet Header Break Experiments in RD-14
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Abstract
A series of experiments has been conducted in the RD-14 thermalhydraulic test facility to investigate the effects of cold water injection, and primary pump trip on the behaviour of a CANDU-type primary heat transport system (PHTS) following a feeder-sized break located at an inlet header. Three of these experiments have been simulated using the CATHENA two-fluid code. RD-14 is a full-height pressurized water loop representing a single figure-of-eight circuit of a CANDU-PHTS, scaled to accommodate a single full- scale (5.0 MW, 21 kg/s) heated channel per pass. CATHENA is an advanced computer code that performs transient thermalhydraulics calculations using a full two-fluid (six-equation) representation of two-phase flow. The test results showed that, in general, provided cold water injection was available to refill the loop following blowdown, the fuel element simulators remained well cooled, and stable natural circulation cooling was readily established following pump trip. CATHENA simulation results generally showed good agreement with experiments for all system parameters including system pressure, flow, sheath temperatures and void readings.
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