NEW IAEA COORDINATED RESEARCH PROJECT ON THERMAL-HYDRAULICS OF SUPERCRITICAL WATER COOLED REACTORS

In view of the high interest among a number of Member States in the Supercritical Water Cooled Reactor (SCWR) concept, the IAEA launched the second Coordinated Research Project (CRP) on thermal-hydraulics of SCWRs, entitled “Understanding and Prediction of Thermal- Hydraulics Phenomena Relevant to SCWRs” in 2014 to foster international collaboration. The key objectives of this new CRP are to (i) improve the understanding and prediction accuracy of thermal-hydraulics phenomena relevant to SCWRs and (ii) benchmark numerical toolsets for their analyses. At present, 12 institutes participate in the CRP from 10 IAEA Member States, and the OECD/NEA is in cooperation, based on a special agreement with the IAEA, to host a database housing experimental and analytical results contributed from the CRP participants. The expected outcomes from this CRP include (i) enhancement of the understanding of thermal-hydraulics phenomena, (ii) sharing of experimental and analytical results, and the prediction methods for key thermal-hydraulics parameters, and (iii) cross-training of personnel between participating institutes through their close interactions and collaboration. This paper describes the plan of the new CRP: overall and specific research objectives; tasks and sub-tasks; schedule; and expected outcomes and outputs. It also introduces briefly other IAEA activities to facilitate and support R&D for SCWR technology in Member States, which include technical meetings and training courses.