Status and future challenges of CFD for liquid metal cooled reactors

Liquid metal cooled reactors are envisaged to play an important role in the future of nuclear energy production because of their possibility to use natural resources efficiently and to reduce the volume and lifetime of nuclear waste. Typically, sodium and lead(-alloys) are envisaged as coolants for such reactors. Obviously, in the development of these reactors, thermal-hydraulics is recognized as a key (safety) challenge. A relatively new technique to deal with thermal-hydraulics issues is Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). This technique is used increasingly nowadays for design and safety evaluation purposes. This paper will discuss the development status of CFD application to liquid metal cooled reactors. In addition, the main challenges for future developments will be indicated. Firstly, the technological challenges will be discussed which ask for CFD application. Afterwards, the needs for CFD development and/or validation will be discussed. The discussion will also include the need for accompanying experiments.