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

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 Toronto, Canada, in September 2011. Thermal-hydraulic issues related to both operating and advanced reactors are presented. Advances in thermal-hydraulics have significantly improved the performance of operating reactors. Further thermal-hydraulics research and development is continuing in both experimental and computational areas for operating reactors, 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.