An experimental study on transient critical heat flux (CHF) under flow coastdown has been performed for the water flow in a non-uniformly heated vertical annulus under low flow and a wide range of pressure conditions. The objectives of this study are to systematically investigate the effect of the flow transient on the CHF and to compare the transient CHF with steady-state CHF The transient CHF experiments have been performed for three kinds of flow transient modes based on the coastdown data of a nuclear power plant reactor coolant pump. At the same inlet subcooling, system pressure and heat flux, the effect of the initial mass flux on the critical mass flux can be negligible. However, the effect of the initial mass flux on the time-to- CHF becomes large as the heat flux decreases. The critical mass flux has the largest value for slow flow reduction rate. There is a pressure effect on the ratio of the transient CHF data to steady-state CHF data. Except under low system pressure conditions, the flow transient CHF was revealed to be conservative compared with the steady-state CHF data. Bowling CHF correlation and thermal hydraulic system code MARS show promising results for the prediction of CHF occurrence .