Assessment of RELAP5/MOD3.3 Against Single Rod Reflooding Experiments

This study presents an assessment of the RELAP5/MOD3.3 using the experimental work upon the rewetting mechanism of bottom flooding of a vertical annular water flow inside a channel enclosing concentrically a heated rod. The experiments have been carried out in the experimental rig 1 of the Nuclear Engineering Department of National Technical University of Athens (NTUA-NED-ER1) inside which the dry out and the rewetting process of a hot vertical rod can be simulated. Experiments have been conducted at atmospheric conditions with liquid coolant flow rate within the range of 0.008 and 0.050 kg·s⁻¹ and two levels of subcooling 25 and 50 K. The initial average surface temperature of the rod for each experiment was set at approximately 823 K. The predicted rod surface temperatures during rewetting of the RELAP5/MOD3.3 calculations were compared against the experimental values. The results presented in this study show that RELAP5/MOD3.3 provides temperature estimations of the reflooding mechanism within acceptable marginal error. However, larger deviations between predicted and experimental values have been observed when subcooled water was used instead of saturated one.