Natural circulation in water-cooled nuclear power plants phenomena, models, and methodology for system reliability assessments

In recent years it has been recognized that the application of passive safety systems (i.e. those whose operation takes advantage of natural forces such as convection and gravity), can contribute to simplification and potentially to improved economics of new nuclear power plant designs. Further, the IAEA Conference on The Safety of Nuclear Power: Strategy for the Future which was convened in 1991 noted that for new plants “the use of passive safety features is a desirable method of achieving simplification and increasing the reliability of the performance of essential safety functions, and should be used wherever appropriate”. Considering the weak driving forces of passive systems based on natural circulation, careful design and analysis methods must be employed to assure that the systems perform their intended functions. To support the development of advanced water cooled reactor designs with passive systems, investigations of natural circulation are an ongoing activity in several IAEA Member States. Some new designs also utilize natural circulation as a means to remove core power during normal operation. In response to the motivating factors discussed above, and to foster international collaboration on the enabling technology of passive systems that utilize natural circulation, an IAEA Coordinated Research Project (CRP) on Natural Circulation Phenomena, Modelling and Reliability of Passive Systems that Utilize Natural Circulation was started in early 2004. Building on the shared expertise within the CRP, this publication presents extensive information on natural circulation phenomena, models, predictive tools and experiments that currently support design and analyses of natural circulation systems and highlights areas where additional research is needed. Therefore, this publication serves both to provide a description of the present state of knowledge on natural circulation in water cooled nuclear power plants and to guide the planning and conduct of the CRP in order to focus the CRP activities on advancing the state of knowledge. With the benefit of the results of the CRP, this publication will be updated in the future to produce a report on the state of the art of natural circulation in water cooled nuclear power plants. This publication also contains material from an intensive IAEA training course on Natural Circulation in Water Cooled Reactors for research scientists and engineers involved in the design, testing or analysis of natural circulation systems.