Grace Time

Completed

Nuclear Fission and Fusion(Nuclear Fission, Nuclear supporting technologies)

Basic and strategic applied research

ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY (Chemical Engineering)
ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY (Mechanical, Aeronautical and Manufacturing Engineering)

Not Cross-cutting

Dr S Walker
Department of Mechanical Engineering
Imperial College London

Standard

EPSRC

01 December 2015

31 May 2020

54 months

£681,131

Energy

London

Energy : Energy

Dr S Walker, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Imperial College London

Dr MJ Bluck, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Imperial College London
Professor M Fairweather, Inst of Particle Science & Engineering, University of Leeds
Dr S He, Mechanical Engineering, University of Sheffield
Professor GF Hewitt, Chemical Engineering, Imperial College London
Dr R Issa, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Imperial College London

Following some fault in a nuclear plant, a safe outcome will nonetheless be achieved so long as adequate cooling can be provided to the plant for a period after the fault, and heat generation has naturally fallen to trivial levels. Some faults may themselves have been associated with external events, such as an earthquake or a tsunami, which might have caused external power supplies to the plant to cease to be available. It is thus plainly desirable for the cooling needed by the plant to be provided by holy "passive" means, not dependent on the availability of either site-generated or externally-generated electricity to drive pumps and so on. Providing cooling by passive means such as natural convection is very attractive and very reliable, but it is not an easy phenomenon to predict reliably; for example, just 'how much' cooling will natural circulation provide?. The main objectives of this piece of research are to develop and validate methods to contribute to reliable prediction of this passive cooling

17/02/16