Mixing of cooling water in the mixing chambers of the HPLWR—High Performance Light Water Reactor

The High Performance Light Water Reactor (HPLWR), a supercritical water cooled reactor concept with multiple heat-up steps, requires efficient mixing of the coolant between these steps to minimize hot spots in the core. Analyzing and improving the mixing in the mixing chamber above the core, situated between evaporator and superheater assemblies, and below the core, between the first and second superheater, is one of the challenges in the design process of the HPLWR. Different measures to enhance mixing have been studied with CFD analyses, in which a new design approach has been applied to the upper mixing chamber. It simplifies the complex structures and takes the effects of the disregarded structures into account by introducing source terms into the momentum equations.