The natural circulation of primary coolant plays an important role in removing the decay heat in Station Black-out (SBO) accident from reactor core to decay heat removal systems, such as RVACS and PHXS cooling, for lead-based reactor. In order to study the natural circulation characteristics of primary coolant under Reactor Vessel Air Cooling System (RVACS) and primary heat exchangers (PHXs) cooling, which are crucial to the safety of lead-based reactors. A three-dimensional CFD model for the China Lead-based Research Reactor (CLEAR-I) has been built to analyze the thermal-hydraulics characteristics of primary coolant system and the cooling capability of the two systems. The abilities of the two cooling systems with different decay heat powers were discussed as well. The results demonstrated that the decay heat could be removed effectively only relying on either of the two systems. However, RVACS appeared the obvious thermal stratification phenomenon in the cold pool. Besides, with the increase in decay heat power, the natural circulation capacity of primary coolant between the two systems had a significant difference. The PHXs cooling system was stronger than the RVACS, with respect to the mass flow of primary coolant and the average temperature difference between cold pool and hot pool. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.