The Passive Moderator Cooling System (PMCS) of the Advanced Heavy Water Reactor is designed to remove heat from the moderator passively in case of an extended station black out condition (SBO). The hot heavy-water moderator inside the Calandria rises upward due to buoyancy, cooled in a shell and tube heat exchanger (located within the loop) and returns back to the Calandria, completing a natural circulation loop. The heat exchanger, in turn, is cooled by water from a Gravity Driven Water Pool (GDWP); forming a second loop. This coupled natural circulation loop system provides sufficient cooling to prevent the increase of moderator temperature inside the Calandria vessel beyond safe limits during SBO. The feasibility of such a system should be assessed before it is implemented in the reactor. Thus, a scaled test facility was set up to simulate the thermal hydraulic characteristics of the PMCS. A set of time varying power experiments were performed, which capture the flow initiation from rest phenomena and the multidimensional natural convection flow in a coupled natural circulation system. Next, the experimental geometry was simulated using the three-dimensional computational fluid dynamics code (OpenFoam 2.2.0), which predicted temperature and flow distribution inside the system. The CFD results agree well with the experimental data within +/- 6%. The flow initiation phenomena shows that the initial flow generated recirculates within the Calandria, after similar to 900 s the flow is able to come out of the Calandria. The experiments show a time lag between the starting of the primary and secondary loop circulation. This work demonstrates the experimental and computational capability to understand and design an effective Passive Moderator Cooling System. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.