Issues and future direction of thermal-hydraulics research and development in nuclear power reactors

Saha, P.*; Aksan, N.*; Andersen, J.*; Yan, J.*; Simoneau, J. P.*; Leung, L.*; Bertrand, F.*; Aoto, Kazumi ; Kamide, Hideki 

The paper archives the proceedings of an expert panel discussion on the issues and future direction of thermal-hydraulic research and development in nuclear power reactors held at the NURETH-14 conference in September 2011. Advances in thermal hydraulics have significantly improved the performance of operating reactors and are continuing in both experimental and computational areas for reactors under construction or ready for near-term deployment, and advanced Generation-IV reactors. As the computing power increases, the fine-scale multi-physics computational models, coupled with the systems analysis code, are expected to provide answers to many challenging problems in both operating and advanced reactor designs.