The Terry Turbine project is sponsored by IAE Japan and Sandia National Labs. The project is related to the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear power plant disaster which occurred in Japan in March 2011. After the tsunami flooded the power station, the plant lost power and the ability to control the nuclear reactor core. One of the cooling systems was able to operate independently, in a self-regulating mode for over 70 hours, 5-6 times the anticipated operation time. Current hypotheses state that the turbine running the cooling system was operating under two-phase flow, which degraded turbine performance and prevented it from tripping the over-speed safety. Current work at the turbomachinery laboratory aims to develop performance curves for the cooling system’s turbine under two-phase flow for use in validating accident simulation codes that have attempted to recreate the progression of events during the accident.
