Page 17 - Thermal Hydraulics Aspects of Liquid Metal Cooled Nuclear Reactors

xvi Foreword

(c) the establishment of best practice guidelines, verification and validation methodologies,
and uncertainty quantification methods for liquid-metal fast reactor thermal hydraulics.
The fundamental and generic nature of the SESAME project also provides results of
relevance for the safety assessment of contemporary light-water reactors. By exten-
ding its knowledge base, it will contribute to the development of robust safety policies
in European Member States and further. SESAME allows enhancing and further
developing European experimental facilities and numerical tools. Finally, SESAME
also closely interacts with the European liquid-metal-cooled reactor design teams,
who actively advised on the content of the project. As the prime end-users, the results
stemming from the project should ensure that their innovative reactor designs reach
the highest safety standards using frontier scientific developments.
Gen-IV innovative nuclear reactors are also very attractive to young students,
scientists, and engineers engaging in a nuclear career thanks to the related scientific
challenges characterized by higher operating temperatures and studies on high-
temperature materials, corrosion effects, heavy liquid-metal thermodynamics, inno-
vative heat exchangers, fast neutron fluxes for both breeding, and enhanced burning
of long-lived wastes. Development, fabrication, and testing of entirely new nuclear
fuels, advanced fuel cycles, and fuel recycling concepts including partitioning and
transmutation are required, all promoting excellent topical opportunities for intern-
ships or PhD studies within R&D laboratories. Beyond the obvious educational merit
for young engineers investing on average into additional 2 years’ fast reactor studies,
scientists and engineers would also have a broader expertise when working on
enhanced LWR technology and crosscutting safety, core physics, engineering, and
material areas. Also, a successful Gen-IV design team would highly benefit from
“systemic” and “interdisciplinary” specialists in the various scientific disciplines
involved such as neutronics, thermal hydraulics, materials science, and coolant
technologies together with “assembling” engineers capable to perform optimized
integrations of all topical results into “realistic” reactor components and “most
efficient” balance of plants.
EU/Euratom Education, Training, Skills and Competences sustainable objectives
are fulfilled as national and European “technological schools” are today evolving suc-
cessfully toward “international training platforms” (or centers of excellence), for
example, in France, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Sweden, the Netherlands, or the United
Kingdom. All reviewed papers published and this textbook are the result of a common
effort of all partners involved, and it is very appreciated from the entire scientific com-
munity. I would like to express my gratitude on behalf of EU/Euratom to all of them.

Roger Garbil, Scientific/Technical Project/Policy Officer
European Commission, Euratom—Nuclear Fission Energy