Effects of two-phase liquid-gas flow on the performance of nuclear reactor cooling pumps

Abstract An important aspect of nuclear energy is safety. One of the most severe accidents in nuclear power generation is the loss of coolant, where the re-circulating coolant of the pressurized water reactor may flash into steam. Under such, two-phase flow, conditions the reactor cooling pumps become unable to generate the same head as that of the single-phase flow case. In this work, high-speed video observations were conducted on a nuclear reactor cooling pump, in which, the bubbles motions into the impeller passages were identified.