Experimental investigation of in-vessel mixing phenomena in a VVER-1000 scaled test facility during unsteady asymmetric transients

In-vessel turbulent mixing phenomena affect the time and space distribution of coolant properties (e.g., boron concentration and temperature) at the core inlet which impacts consequently the neutron kinetics response. For reactor safety evaluation purposes and to characterize these phenomena it is necessary to set and validate appropriate numerical modelling tools to improve the current conservative predictions. With such purpose, an experimental campaign was carried out by OKB Gidropress, in the framework of the European Commission Project “TACIS R2.02/02 – Development of safety analysis capabilities for VVER-1000 transients involving spatial variations of coolant properties (temperature or boron concentration) at core inlet”. The experiments were conducted on a scaled facility representing the primary system of a VVER-1000 including a detailed model of the Reactor Pressure Vessel with its internals. The simulated transients involved perturbations of coolant properties distribution providing a wide validation matrix. The main achievements of the set of experiments featuring transient asymmetric pump behaviour are presented in this paper. The potential of the obtained experimental database for the validation of thermal fluid dynamics numerical simulation tools is also discussed and the role of computational fluid dynamics in supporting the experimental data analysis is highlighted.