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.