Achievements and status of research activities in the corium area

Titre du congrès :ERMSAR 2007 2nd European Review Meeting on Severe Accident Research

Ville du congrès :Karlshure
Date du congrès :12/06/2007

Within SARNET, the corium topic covers all the behaviour of corium from early phase of core degradation up to in or ex-vessel corium recovery issues with the exception of corium interaction with water, direct containment heating and fission product release. The Corium topic regroups in three work packages the critical mass of competence to improve significantly the corium behaviour knowledge. The spirit of the SARNET networking is to share the knowledge, the facilities and the simulation tools to reach a better efficiency and to rationalise the R&D effort at European level. Extensive benchmarking has been launched in most of the areas of research. These benchmarks were mainly dedicated at the recalculation of experiments, while, in the next periods, a larger focus will be given to integral experiments or reactor applications. Eventually, all the knowledge will be accumulated in ASTEC safety code through physical model improvements and extension of validation database. This paper summarizes the progresses that have been achieved in the frame of the networking activities and underlines also the orientation of the corium work packages tasks for the next period. A special focus on pool and debris coolability and corium-concrete interaction will be presented. In these topics, the effects due to multidimensional geometries and heterogeneities has been shown, during SARNET, to play a crucial role and further research is still needed