The H2020 McSAFER Project: Main Goals, Technical Work Program, and Status

Abstract

This paper describes the main objectives, technical content, and status of the H2020 project entitled “High-performance advanced methods and experimental investigations for the safety evaluation of generic Small Modular Reactors (McSAFER)”. The main pillars of this project are the combination of safety-relevant thermal hydraulic experiments and numerical simulations of different approaches for safety evaluations of light water-cooled Small Modular Reactors (SMR). It describes the goals, the consortium, and the involved thermal hydraulic test facilities, e.g., the COSMOS-H (KIT), HWAT (KTH), and MOTEL (LUT), including the experimental programs. It also outlines the different safety assessment methodologies applied to four different SMR-designs, namely the CAREM (CNEA), SMART (KAERI), F-SMR (CEA), and NuScale. These methodologies are multiscale thermal hydraulics, conventional, low order, and high fidelity neutron physical methods used to demonstrate the inherent safety features of SMR-core designs under postulated design-basis-accident conditions. Finally, the status of the investigations is shortly discussed followed by the dissemination activities and an outlook.

Safety and Performance Aspects in the Development and Qualification of High Burnup Nuclear Fuels for Water Cooled Reactors

“…These include pin-by-pin simulations of PWRs or WWERs by means of the coupled Serpent-Subchanflow-TRANSURANUS code system [51,52]. This work is being extended to simulate fuel rods with accident tolerant materials such as FeCrAl cladding and U3Si2 fuel in various water cooled SMRs such as the Nuscale reactor within the McSAFER project [53].…”

Advanced numerical simulation and modeling for reactor safety – contributions from the CORTEX, McSAFER, and METIS projects

“…The main objective of McSAFER is, first of all, to provide new experimental data gained in three different facilities (at KIT, KTH, and LUT) under conditions relevant to light water-cooled Small Modular Reactor (SMR)-concepts. Moreover, the purpose of the project is to compare different safety analysis methodologies (industry-like standard methods, advanced and high-fidelity numerical tools) to analyze the behavior of the core, the Reactor Pressure Vessel (RPV), and the integral plant under selected transient conditions [7]. The safety evaluations focus on four SMR concepts: the French F-SMR, the Argentinian CAREM design, the US NuScale design, and the Korean SMART reactor.…”

Bibliometric Review and Technical Summary of PWR Small Modular Reactors

“…Like the commercial reactors developed in Generations II and III, SMRs can be classified according to technology. Thus, nuclear reactors can be classified according to the main technologies into the following categories: [35] (Figure 3): (i) light water reactors; (ii) pressurized heavy water reactors; (iii) high-temperature gas-cooled reactors [36]; (iv) molten salt reactors; (v) liquid metal-cooled reactors; and (vi) fast neutron reactors. Within the first category, light water reactors, one can find Pressurized Water Reactors (PWR) and Boiling Water Reactor (BWR).…”