This programme sets out to reduce uncertainties when evaluating the environmental release of radioactive products such as iodine or ruthenium following a core meltdown accident in a pressurised water reactor (PWR).

FARO (Furnace And Release Oven) experimental facility began the experiments of the LWR-MFCI phenomena in 1990 in collaboration with several reactor safety research organizations from European Union member countries and with the participation of the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Facility consists of the hemispherical test vessel, a volumetric heating system in the test vessel to simulate the decay heat, a heating furnace to generate and pour the simulated corium melt, and a multitude of instrumentation to characterize the status of the melt.

SIMECO program at KTH was performed to investigate the heat transfer of natural convection in an internal heated liquid pool, simulating a molten corium pool which may be formed in the reactor lower plenum during a severe accident.

The separate effect studies of vertical steam generators have been conducted in the CIEMAT PECA facility, which was properly modified and conditioned for that purpose. The PECA facility set-up used in the SGTR separate effect tests basically consists of:

The KROTOS test facility is a relatively small scale experimental installation dedicated to the study of: (a) molten fuel-coolant pre-mixing either with prototypic reactor melts or simulants such as alumina up to 5 kg; (b) progression and energetics of spontaneous and triggered fuel-coolant interactions (vapor explosions).

The Epicur programme (physicochemical studies on confined iodine under irradiation) aims at providing experimental data to validate the chemical models for iodine in the reactor containment under accident conditions. These models are integrated into the Iode model of the Astec computer code, jointly developed by IRSN and GRS.

Experimental facility Figure &
A single sampler unit

The Mozart analytical test program, conducted from 2005 to 2007, was dedicated to the study of oxidation in air of nuclear fuel cladding.

The aim of the DEFOR (Debris Bed Formation) program is clarification of the phenomena that govern formation of the debris bed in different scenarios of corium melt release into a deep water pool and quantification of the debris bed properties related to coolability.

Complex measurements were performed at the integral high temperature test facility CODEX (COre Degradation Experiment) between 1995-2002 with electrically heated UO2 fuel rod bundles.

The objective of the EMAIC (Emission AIC) facility is to characterise the physico-chemical nature of the aerosol source term resulting from the vaporisation of control rod material made of the metals Silver (Ag), indium (In), Cadmium (Cd) after their cladding rupture during a PWR severe accident.