CFD analysis of coolant flow at bushehr nuclear reactor

The influence of fluid flow and heat transfer study within a pressurized water reactor is of significant importance for the demonstration of the reactor performance and its safety in both steady and transient states. in the present paper, the three dimensional flow distributions in the downcomer and the lower plenum of the reactor were calculated with the computational fluid dynamics (cfd) codes. calculations were performed for the vver-1000, v446 reactor at the bushehr nuclear power plant, iran. although cfd codes provide an effective tool for the calculation of flow distribution in the reactor pressure vessel (rpv), computer capacity puts restrictions on the capacity of cfd calculations. consequently, simplified models had to be used in simulating the rpv. nevertheless, our investigation shows a reasonable agreement between the numerical results and the measured data.