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U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

HEAT TRANSFER AND STABILITY STUDIES IN BOILING WATER REACTORS. Quarterly Progress Report VII, July 1, 1962-October 1, 1962

Technical Report ·
OSTI ID:4160505
Difficulties were encountered using the preheater in the subcooler circuit. The Thermocoax heating element extension outside of the flange has to be cooled at higher preheater powers up to 15 kw. Preparations were made for the installation of the forced circulation circuit. The pump was installed. Serious difficulties with the photomultipliers arose when using the scintillation counters for the void fraction measurements. It appeared that the photocathode including the conducting layer of silver of the photomultipliers had disappeared. Measurements of the cathode and anode current showed that overloading of the photomultipliers had not taken place. New photomultipliers did not give difficulties. Improvements were made to the scalar and mixing unit. The low frequencies in the signal of the flow rate was caused by small amounts of air in th circuit especially in the needle valves. The method of filling was improved to avoid the trapping of air. Hydraulic instabilities during boiling were recorded by feeding the signals from the burn-out detector and differential pressure gauge to a Visicorder. The data were then fed into a digital computer which calculated tue auto-correlation functions and power density curves. The results show a marked oscillation of 0.4 cps in addition to oscillations of lesser amplitude around 1 cps. A new mathematical model was programmed for the IBM computer for static hydraulic calculations incorporating both subcooled boiling and the effect of the change in saturation temperature with height. (auth)
Research Organization:
Eindhoven, Netherlands. Technische Hogeschool
NSA Number:
NSA-18-001175
OSTI ID:
4160505
Report Number(s):
EURAEC-504; WW/R-24
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English