Generic Experimental Investigations of Thermohydraulic Instabilities With Void Fraction Measurement at Natural Circulation Test Facility Geneva

Passive systems like natural circulation (NC) loops can offer reliable and cost efficient alternatives to common active systems for decay heat removal in nuclear power plants. During the transition between stable single and stable two phase flows, instabilities e. g. flashing and geysering may occur in the riser due to low system pressure and saturation temperature conditions. These instabilities may cause severe stress to the system components. This paper presented some results of the study on the decay heat removal system based on natural circulation, performed on the open loop NC test facility GENEVA, built at TU Dresden in 2013. 16 probes were used to determine void fraction along the riser on nine different levels in high time and spatial resolution, and stability maps was created for riser with inner diameters of 20 mm and 38 mm and up to 85 kW evaporator power.