Abstract The quenching process has become an important thermal management study to intensify the safety margin for the integrity of the reactor vessel under the core meltdown condition. The boiling heat transfer mechanism in the channel is one aspect that needs further examination. The present study aimed to investigate the effect of the differences in channel gap size to counter-current flow limitation (CCFL) and critical heat flux (CHF) during transient cooling in atmospheric pressure and quenching using two vertical plates with 1 mm, 2 mm, and 3 mm gap sizes and heated length of 1100 mm. The initial temperature of the plate was set at 600 °C. Cooling water mass flow rate and sib-cooled temperature were set at about 0.089 kg/s and 90 °C, respectively. Calculations were performed to obtain the CHF value through the boiling curve using transient temperature data. Non-dimensional correlations from other research study was used in this research. The influence of gap sizes on CCFL and CHF resulted in an increased value of CHF relative to gap size; additionally, the CHF for gap sizes of 2 mm and 3 mm increased about 34.4% and 140.5%, respectively, compared to the CHF for the 1 mm gap size. In this research, a curve map of the relationship between non-dimensional CHF and non-dimensional mass flux of water flowing downward shows that the correlation of this experimental study has a gradient number of about 0.22 similar to Mishima and Nishihara correlation. The results confirmed the existence of CCFL in the vertical narrow rectangular channels due to changes in gap sizes that contribute to changes in CHF. Rewetting time also became longer with increasing gap sizes.