Source Term Research within the European Severe Accident Research Network (SARNET)

31 Reunión Anual. Sociedad Nuclear Española, Logroño (Spain), 19-21 octobre 2005

L.E. Herranz(1), P. Giordano(2), T. Haste(3).

The main safety issues in the Light Water Reactor Severe Accident (SA) area were identified in the Phenomena Identification and Ranking Table (PIRT) produced in the EURSAFE project of the 5th Framework Program (Magallon et al., 2005). To resolve them, about 50 European organizations have pooled their research capacities in the SARNET project (Severe Accident Research and management NETwork) of the EU 6th Framework Programme, with the wish to maintain a long-lasting cooperation.

Three major areas of research have been considered: corium, containment and source term. In-vessel and ex-vessel aspects of corium behaviour are investigated and a major effort is also being aimed at developing the thermodynamic and material databases. Energetic phenomena that could potentially threaten containment integrity, such as direct containment heating, fuel-coolant interactions and hydrogen combustion and distribution, are being studied. Source term is focused on specific issues affecting release of fission products (FPs) especially in oxidising environments, their transport along the primary circuit and their behaviour in the containment.

The main objective of this paper is to introduce the overall features of SARNET and to illustrate its potential through examining the results achieved within the Source Term topic during the first year.

(1) : CIEMAT
(2) : IRSN
(3) : PSI