Page 16 - Thermal Hydraulics Aspects of Liquid Metal Cooled Nuclear Reactors

Foreword

The European Atomic Energy Community (EU/Euratom) Research and Training
framework programs are benefitting from a consistent success in pursuing excellence
in research and facilitating pan-European collaborative efforts in nuclear fission and
across a broad range of nuclear science and technologies.
For the long-term sustainable development of nuclear energy, innovative nuclear
systems such as Gen-IV reactors and transmutation systems need to be developed for
meeting future energy and climate challenges on earth. Thermal hydraulics is recog-
nized as a key scientific challenge, and it is an opportunity for the development of
innovative reactor systems.
From 2015, EU/Euratom cofounded the project H2020-SESAME (thermal hydrau-
lic Simulations and Experiments for the Safety Assessment of Metal-cooled reactors)
following a successful open call for proposals. SESAME not only gathers 23 partners
from 9 European countries (The Netherlands, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy,
Slovenia, Czech Republic, Sweden, and Switzerland) but also benefits from interna-
tional cooperation with US DoE laboratories (Argonne National Laboratory (ANL)
and Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL)) under a EU/Euratom-DoE framework
agreement supporting the development of nuclear energy research including innova-
tive reactor concepts (I-NERI).
The consortium has a long-standing experience in the field of nuclear technology
and nuclear thermal hydraulics; most of them have successfully cooperated in related
EU/Euratom projects; pan-European experience and knowledge is being further cap-
italized together with modeling, simulation, validation, and infrastructure capabilities
from (a) previous or on-going projects including H2020-ESNII+, FP7-ADRIANA,
CP-ESFR, LEADER, MAXSIMA, SEARCH, THINS, CDT and HeLiMNet, FP6-
EUROTRANS, EISOFAR, and ELSY and (b) GIF 2009 R&D Outlook and GIF
2013 Technology Roadmap of the Generation IV international Forum, IAEA 2012
status updates on fast reactors, IAEA 2014 summary workshop report on priorities
in Modeling and Simulation for Fast Neutron Systems, OECD/NEA 2011 TAREF
report on infrastructures and R&D needs for sodium fast reactor safety, SNETP
2013 Strategic Research and Innovation agenda, 2010 European Sustainable Nuclear
Industrial Initiative (ESNII), and 2015 Deployment strategy.
SESAME supports mainly the development of liquid-metal reactor technologies
identified within ESNII (SFR-ASTRID, LFR-ALFRED, and ADS MYRRHA) by
addressing their prenormative, fundamental, and safety-related challenges being
(a) the development and validation of advanced numerical approaches for the design and safety
evaluation of advanced reactors;
(b) the achievement of a new or extended validation base by creating new reference data;