International Seminar “In-vessel retention: outcomes of IVMR project”

Juan les Pins, Palais des Congrès, France

January 21-22, 2020

Objectives of the seminar

The last international seminar on in-vessel corium retention (IVR) was organised by IRSN and EC-JRC in June 2016, in Aix-en-Provence (France), with the sponsorship of ETSON. It was followed by an IAEA Technical Meeting, in October 2016, on “Phenomenology and Technologies Relevant to In-Vessel Melt Retention and Ex-Vessel Corium Cooling”.

Currently, new reactor designs (AP1000 and HPR1000 in particular) involving an IVR strategy were built in different countries and some of them are already in operation. Therefore it is important to share, as much as possible, scientific knowledge and methodology about IVR in order to help safety authorities taking decisions. For this, a consensus on several issues should be reached between R&D experts.

The first objective of this seminar is to present the main outcomes of the European project IVMR (2015-2019) and to draw conclusions from that project. Among the main issues, the impact of transient evolutions of oxide and metal layers on the focusing effect and the issue of the long term mechanical behaviour of the ablated vessel wall will be discussed in details. Issues about external cooling efficiency, innovations and back fitting will also be addressed.

A second objective is to bring together an international panel of actors involved in severe accident management issues, either from the regulatory side or from research or industry, in order to share knowledge and views about the IVR strategy. Through panel discussions and technical sessions, all the important issues of the IVR strategy will be covered and discussed. The technical sessions will also include presentations from experts out of the IVMR project, in order to give the widest overview as possible on the IVR topic.