PRESERVATION OF THERMALHYDRAULIC AND SEVERE ACCIDENT EXPERIMENTAL DATA PRODUCED BY THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION

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 thermalhydraulic (TH) 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 PWR. The JRC was engaged during decades in relevant SA experimental projects: 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. 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 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 (DATANET) (http://stresa.jrc.ec.europa.eu/sarnet/) which is connected to several other STRESA institutions nodes with SA experimental data. 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. The present JRC-Petten NURAM Action is engaged in the development of a new STRESA tool to support NUGENIA TA2. The target is to keep the main features of the existing STRESA structure but using the new informatics technologies that are nowadays available and providing new capabilities. A future activity will be also to promote the new database as a secure EU storage for SA experimental data and calculations.

PLA FREIXA Patricia;  AMMIRABILE Luca;  PASCAL Ghislain;  ANNUNZIATO Alessandro; 

2014-01-27

Nuclear Society of Slovenia

JRC84242

978-961-6207-36-2,