Nuclear Reactor Thermal-Hydraulics: Past, Present and Future

This monograph summarizes the major developments on nuclear reactor
thermal-hydraulics over the last fifty years, primarily for the
water-cooled reactors, and provides a direction for the future thermalhydraulic
developments for water-cooled, including small modular reactors
or SMR, and Generation IV reactors. This includes discussion
on the steady-state reactor thermal hydraulics including subchannel
analysis, evolution of emergency core cooling systems (ECCS ) from active
to fully passive systems to remove the decay heat, and development
and consolidation of the best-estimate safety analysis methodology.
With substantial increase in computing power, the computational fluid
dynamics (CFD ) tools for single-phase and multi-phase flows are being
used more these days to address some of the important reactor thermalhydraulics
phenomena which could not be analyzed earlier using the
traditional one-dimensional or coarse three-dimensional analysis tools.
Development of multi-physics methodology encompassing neutronics,
thermal-hydraulics, thermal-mechanical and coolant chemistry has also
started.
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