The majority of Small Modular Reactor (SMR) designs for near-term deployment adopt advanced passive safety system technology to cope with both design basis- and design extension conditions. The goal of this CRP is to develop a common, novel approach for designing passive engineered safety features for SMRs and offer methods or good practices for assessing their performance and reliability. This will include design safety considerations of appropriate and practical countermeasures, which incorporate and address lessons learned from the major accidents in order to enhance the design of engineered safety systems of SMRs (particularly of the integral-PWR type currently under development).
CRP Overall Objectives
The overall objectives of this CRP are to develop approaches for designing passive engineered safety features for SMRs and propose methods for the assessment of their performance and reliability. The CRP will highlight comparison of reliability and performance assessment methods for key safety issues on water-cooled SMRs, including: (1) separation and independence of reactor trip and safety system actuation logics; (2) diversity and redundancy for depressurizing the reactor coolant pressure boundary to facilitate safety injection during a high pressure transient; (3) diversity and redundancy of core cooling; (4) options and approaches for assuring containment structural integrity; and (5) the use of natural circulation for primary core heat removal. The CRP will also investigate how passive safety system technology can be used and retrofitted into the operating PWRs or BWRs and those under construction.
Specific Research Objectives
- Develop a common, novel approach for designing passive engineered safety features for SMRs and provide method for assessing their performance and reliability;
- Perform validation of methodologies for SMRs passive safety features performance assessment using experimental test facilities;
- Explore and formulate future research and development needs on advanced system thermal-hydraulic and reactor safety engineering to complement SMR design for near term deployment.
How to join the CRP?
Please submit your Proposal for Research Contract or Agreement by 15 August 2017 directly to the IAEA’s Research Contracts Administration Section, using the form templates on the CRA pages.
For further information related to this CRP, potential applicants could contact the Project Officers: Hadid Subki and Stefano Monti, Nuclear Power Technology Development Section, Division of Nuclear Power, Department of Nuclear Energy, IAEA.