  The critical heat flux (CHF) is an important thermal-hydraulic parameter that
must be determined during the design of water-cooled reactors to ensure safety
of operation. In this paper, a methodology is proposed to predict the CHF in
VVER rod bundles. A whole-reactor model of VVER-1000 is implemented in
RELAP-SCDAPSIM, and, based on the bundle-average approach, the parameters of
the hot channel are used to assess four CHF predictors (i.e., the 2006
Groeneveld look-up table (LUT), and the Bowring, W-3, Biasi, and OKB-Gidropress
correlations) upon comparison with the 2011 Bobkov LUT. A brief critique is
given of the correction factors for both the Groeneveld and Bobkov LUTs. The
effects of channel diameter and non-uniform axial heat flux on the predicted
values of CHF in subcooled conditions are also studied. The performance and
time complexity of the standard and Bourke trilinear interpolation algorithms
are assessed for use with LUTs in safety codes. It has been concluded that the
non-uniform axial heat flux does not affect the CHF in subcooled conditions and
that the Groeneveld diameter factor exponent gives better predictability of the
CHF in VVER rod bundles over the Tanase and Wong exponent correlations.
Additionally, the Groeneveld LUT has been found to nearly reproduces the Bobkov
LUT CHF values when used in conjunction with the Bobkov heated length factor.
Values of MDNBR equal to 1.83 and 1.96 can be used as thermal limits at 12\%
overpower when the Bowring and W-3 correlations, respectively, are used in
subcooled conditions. The standard and Bourke algorithms nearly exhibit the
same average CPU time. The Bourke algorithm, however, is less affected by
noise. Further research is needed to ensure the smoothness of the Bobkov LUT
and to derive reactor type-dependent correction factor formulas for use with
the Groeneveld LUT.
