New nuclear power stations are likely to be a major contributor to energy security and reduction of carbon emissions. Such reactors will almost certainly be water-cooled. Whilst water is a very good coolant, steam is not, and the water coolant can become steam under certain conditions. The three themes of this project are each aimed at developing a better understanding of when this transition occurs, and developing better techniques to predict this. This project is an international collaboration, between scientists at the Bhaba Atomic Research Centre (BARC) in India, and groups at three UK universities. The better techniques will be based on experimental measurements of boiling systems to be conducted at BARC, in conjunction with the UK participants, and the development of computational models based on these.

Potential Impact:
The main impact of the work will be in the provision of better models of the boiling, 'critical heat flux' phenomena and heat transfer to fluids at supercritical pressure. These will be important because they will allow designs to be proposed with greater confidence, and to have less conservative margins applied, improving both the safety and economics of the plant. This impact will be achieved by making sure the work is widely disseminated, via journal papers and conference presentation, but also by the extensive direct research-based interactions between the investigators and the nuclear industry.