Advancing the State-of-Practice in Uncertainty and Sensitivity Methodologies for Severe Accident Analysis in Water-Cooled Reactors
Closed for Proposals
Project Type
Coordinated Research ProjectProject Code
I31033
CRP
2172
Approved Date
19 December 2018Project Status
ClosedStart Date
7 June 2019Expected End Date
6 June 2024Completed Date
1 September 2025Participating Countries
United Arab Emirates, Argentina, Canada, Germany, Egypt, Spain, Ghana, Italy, Republic of Korea, Lithuania, Mexico, Malaysia, Pakistan, Romania, Russian Federation, Ukraine, United States of AmericaDescription
- Advanced understanding of the status and capabilities of multi-physics/multi-scale simulation tools in modeling propagation and consequences of severe accidents in advanced WCRs;
- Improved modeling of severe accidents based on multi-physics/multi-scaln
Objectives
Foster national excellence and promote international collaboration among IAEA Member States through an exercise to elevate the ability and sophistication of global severe accident code users and participation in benchmark calculations.
The CRP will be implemented as a programmatic activity of the IAEA Project 1.1.5.1 “Technology development for water cooled reactors” starting with the IAEA Programme and Budget Cycle 2018-2019, (Task 2018.09, CRP2172). Many objectives of the Project 1.1.5.1 are to increase cooperation by Member States on technology development for advanced reactors, improve economics and safety through information exchange, cooperative research, collaborative assessments and sharing of expertise, as well as to provide technology training materials for the next generation of nuclear professionals. Given its overall objective, the CRP clearly responds to the objectives of the IAEA Project 1.1.5.1.
Specific Objectives
Review of the advancement in uncertainty and sensitivity analysis for severe accident codes across the Member States
Develop high level recommendations on uncertainty and sensitivity analysis for severe accident codes with the intent of capturing best practices and lessons learned
Training of early-career engineers and scientists, and establishing opportunities for PhD dissertations; develop workshops and training and education courses
Impact
This CRP was formulated in result of the Technical Meeting (TM) in 2017, which was a response to:
- Member States interests in information exchange on the status of severe accident simulation and modelling codes and tools for WCRs
- Request from the Technical Working Groups on Advanced Technologies for LWRs and HWRs meeting held in May 2017, to address the status of these codes and outline associated uncertainties, address gaps for further improvements, development and analyses.
Common observations from the above mentioned TM led to the CRP rationale, namely:
- Severe accident codes embody complex multi-discipline physics spanning wide range of phenomena – often outside user range of experience and competency
- Code users are often unsure about correctness or accuracy of their plant accident analyses
- Code users are often not aware of importance or impact of uncertainty and variability in predicted code results
With the successful implementation of the CRP aim, namely to improve the state of practice in severe accident analyses by examining and characterizing the impact of uncertainty and variability on severe accident analyses, the common observations were addressed.
Relevance
This CRP brought together the current state-of-knowledge on uncertainty propagation in severe accident analyses that has been accumulated by experienced analysts. The CRP contributed as well to the significant improvement in sophistication and quality of severe accident analyses and fostered collaboration amongst the participants from Member States with well developed knowledge, adequate simulation capabilities (both software and hardware) and long years of relevant practice. The benchmark studies by the participating Member States lead to new knowledge discovery via sharing of research results relevant to evaluation of uncertainties in severe accident analyses with various codes. Knowledge was gathered, discussed and shared with the young generation involved in this area, thus insuring continuity.
CRP Publications
IAEA
IAEA-TECDOC-2031
Advancing the State of the Practice in Uncertainty and Sensitivity Methodologies for Severe Accident Analysis in Water Cooled Reactors of PWR and SMR Types