The Goal of the New Approach to Reactor Safety Improvements (NARSIS) Project

Eighteen academic, research and industrial European institutions from Slovenia (GEN, JSI),  Croatia (APOSS), Italy (ENEA, UNIPI), France (CEA, BRGM, IRSN, EDF, Framatome – ex Areva NP), Austria (NUCCON), Poland (NCBJ, WUT),  Germany (KIT, Framatome - ex. Areva), Finland (VTT), The Netherlands (TU Delft, NRG), United Kingdom (EDF Energy) formed a consortium and applied to the H2020-Euratom call. The main ambitions of the consortium are to fill some gaps identified in existing external events probabilistic safety analyses (PSA) and to improve parts of the existing methodologies by 3 points: (1) to adapt most up to date frameworks and methodologies already existing or under development outside of nuclear community; (2) to use knowledge and experience on recent national and international projects; (3) to develop demonstration cases at the real NPP scale. Interactions are envisaged with on-going international initiatives and with the International Advisory Board, which will follow and discuss the project results with the aim to propose recommendations for future regulations. The main expected results are the development of an integrated risk framework for safety analyses and the development of a decision-making tool for demonstration of nuclear facility management. The integrated risk framework consists of:

·         Scenarios comprising single or multiple external hazards.  Hazards can be combined or cascading and include earthquake, flooding, extreme weather and others,

·         The physical and functional fragilities and interdependencies between systems/equipment are taken into account,

·         Human factors are taken into account and may play important role during severe accidents.

·         A support decision-making tool will be developed to demonstrate nuclear facility management during severe accidents due to external natural events.

The project is structured into seven work packages (WP):

·         WP1: External hazards characterisation,

·         WP2: Fragility assessment of main NPPs critical elements,

·         WP3: Integration and safety analysis,

·         WP4: Applying & comparing various safety assessment approaches on a virtual reactor,

·         WP5: Supporting tool for severe accident management,

·         WP6: Dissemination, recommendation, and training,

·         WP7: Project management and coordination.

The NARSIS project started in autumn 2017, with the duration of 4 years.