Severe accident research in the core degradation area An example of effective international cooperation between the European Union (EU) and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) by the International Science and Technology Center
Résumé
The International Science and Technology Center (ISTC) was set up in Moscow to support non-proliferation of sensitive knowledge and technologies in biological, chemical and nuclear domains by engaging scientists in peaceful research programmes with a broad international cooperation. The paper has two following objectives • to describe the organization of complex, international, experimental and analytical research of material processes under extreme conditions similar to those of severe accidents in nuclear reactors and, • to inform briefly about some results of these studies. The main forms of ISTC activity are Research Projects and Supporting Programs. In the Research Projects informal contact expert groups (CEGs) were set up by ISTC to improve coordination between adjacent projects and to encourage international collaboration. The European Commission was the first to use this. The CEG members - experts from the national institutes and industry - evaluated and managed the projects' scientific results from initial stage of proposal formulation until the final reporting. They were often involved directly in the project's details by joining the Steering Committees of the project. The Contact Expert Group for Severe Accidents and Management (CEG-SAM) is one of these groups, five project groups from this area from the total of 30 funded projects during 10 years of activity are detailed to demonstrate this (1) QUENCH-VVER from RIAR, Dimitrovgrad and IBRAE, Moscow, and PARAMETER projects (SF1-SF4) from LUCH, Podolsk and IBRAE, Moscow; these concerned a detailed study of bundle quenching from high temperature; (2) Reactor Core Degradation; a modelling project simulating the fuel rod degradation and loss of geometry from IBRAE, Moscow; (3) METCOR projects from NITI, St. Petersburg on the interaction of core melt with reactor vessel steel; (4) INVECOR project, NNE Kurchatov City, Kazakhstan; this is a large-scale facility to examine the vessel steel retention of 60 kg corium during the decay heat; and finally, (5) CORPHAD and PRECOS projects, NITI, St. Petersburg undertook a systematic examination of refractory ceramics relevant to in-vessel and ex-vessel coria, particularly examining poorly characterised, limited data or experimentally difficult systems. © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.