PRESERVATION OF EXPERIMENTAL DATA PRODUCED BY THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION FOR CODE VALIDATION IN THE AREA OF NUCLEAR REACTOR SAFETY

The experimental data recorded in Integral Effect Test Facilities (ITFs) are traditionally used in order to validate Best Estimate (BE) system codes and to investigate the behaviour of Nuclear Power Plants (NPP) under accident scenarios. In the same way, facilities dedicated to specific thermal-hydraulic Severe Accident (SA) phenomena are used for the development and improvement of specific analytical models and codes used in the SA analysis for Light Water Reactors (LWR). The extent to which the existing reactor safety experimental databases are preserved was well known and frequently debated and questioned in the nuclear community. The Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission (EC) has been deeply involved in several projects for experimental data production and experimental data preservation. In the area of ITFs the JRC LOBI facility and its project produced data of 70 experiments simulating different accidents and transients. In the area of SA, the FARO, KROTOS facilities simulated Melt Fuel Coolant Interaction (MFCI) phenomena, considering either in-vessel (quenching) and ex-vessel (spreading) experiments and potential situations for steam explosions. The STORM facility simulated experiments in the area of Aerosol Transport. In this context the STRESA (Storage of Thermal REactor Safety Analysis Data) web-based informatics platform was developed by JRC-Ispra with the main objective to disseminate documents and experimental data from large in-house JRC scientific projects, and it is extensively used in order to provide a secure repository of experimental data, exploiting computer information technologies for access and retrieval of the information. At present the JRC STRESA databases are hosted and maintained by JRC-Petten. The paper is presenting these large EC initiatives on the production of experimental data (the LOBI, FARO, KROTOS and STORM facilities and experiments) and its storage in the JRC STRESA node (http://stresa.jrc.ec.europa.eu/stresa/). FARO, KROTOS and STORM data are accessible also through the JRC SARNET-STRESA portal (http://stresa.jrc.ec.europa.eu/sarnet/). The objective of the paper is to further disseminate and promote the usage of the database containing these experimental data and to demonstrate long-term importance of well maintained experimental databases.

PLA FREIXA Patricia;  AMMIRABILE Luca;  ANNUNZIATO Alessandro; 

2013-08-13

Grafiche Caroti – Pisa

JRC80220

ISBN 978-88-902391-2-0,   

https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC80220,