Specific Challenge:

EU nuclear plants need to demonstrate compliance with evolving and stringent safety requirements. Moreover, lessons learned from past accidents should be used to update existing accident management strategies. Therefore, the capability of current simulation tools to correctly cover all segments of the safety assessment methods and accident phenomenology should be verified and validated. This action should support further integration of the EU research community in providing reliable calculation results.

Scope:

Update and development of simulation tools and their experimental validation to improve safety features (including the performance and reliability of passive systems) and accident management strategies for GEN II, GEN III and GEN III+ reactors. The action should address technology gaps and focus on issues still not yet completely covered by past design-basis and severe accident research for GEN II, GEN III and GEN III+. Further, source term re-assessments should be done with a particular emphasis on innovative accident management strategies aiming at assessing human reliability issues and at guarantying a core heat-sink for all kind of accident sequences. The results should be reflected in the severe accident management guidelines (SAMG) and recommendations should be formulated to improve measures for emergency preparedness and response in order to reduce the burden of the emergency plans and possibly reduce the impact of evacuation plans.

At least 5% of the total action budget must be dedicated to Education and Training activities for PhD students, postdoctoral researchers and trainees supported through the action.

Expected Impact:

This action is expected to close remaining design-basis and severe accident open issues in the next decade as well as to support assessments of Nuclear Power Plants' safety based on results of simulation codes, use of experimental data and estimate of risks to increase safety margins of power plants under operation. The results and recommendations for improving emergency response measures will be reflected and integrated into SAMG and accident management strategies. Furthermore, this action is to draw on the unique EU expertise in order to enhance nuclear safety whilst also boosting the EU safety requirements' implementation.