Preliminary Thermohydraulics Design of the LORELEI Device with CATHARE

This report has been issued within the framework of the PAR2008-09 research program of the ENEA-MSE agreement and it is one of the deliverables of the task E "Sviluppo e validazione codici di calcolo" of the work program LP2 "Reattori evolutivi". In the Jules Horowitz Reactor (JHR) experimental facilities are foreseen, including the Light water One Rod Equipment for LOCA Experimental Investigations (LORELEI) device, which is dedicated to Loss Of Coolant Accident (LOCA) transient studies on a single fuel rod. In this work the thermal-hydraulic design of the LORELEI facility was developed with the code CATHARE. The objective of the work was: to define a 3D geometry of the facility; to verify the capacity of the system, under natural circulation, to remove the power generated by the fuel rod (up to 400 W/cm) and the power generated by gamma irradiation heating on the device materials. The study consisted of three main steps: definition of a 3D geometry of the facility, definition of a numerical model, development of thermo-hydraulic calculations.