Safety of Nuclear Powerplants (Centre d'étude nucléaire-Mol)

• Cycle specific safety evaluation methodology.
• Basic principles of the in-core fuel management based on the linear reactivity model.
• Reactivity coefficients (moderator, Doppler), neutron poisons (xenon, samarium, '), their variation with burnup and core state parameters and their impact on core power distribution
• Reactivity control means (boron, control rods, burnable poisons) and their sensitivity to the core burnup and in-core fuel management parameters.
• Operating modes, operating limits and protection diagram.
• Fuel rod design and thermal-mechanical behavior in normal operation and accidental conditions.
• Thermal design procedures and elaboration of the core thermal limits and core protections.
• Core  control, surveillance and protection systems

• Visit of a Nuclear Power Plant.
• Two day session of compact and full scope Nuclear Power Plant simulator.

• Introduction to nuclear safety and defence in depth
• concept of risk, individual and societal risk criteria, release limits, core damage frequency limit, safety goals at function or system level
• deterministic  vs. probabilistic safety analyses;
• probabilistic safety assessment (PSA) methodology and PSA levels
• Component reliability
• Fault tree and event tree analysis
• Markov analysis
• Common cause failure analysis
• Elements of human reliability analysis
• Elements of the level 2 and level 3 PSA methodology
• Limits of the classical PSA methodology
• PSA-based applications

Due to the COVID-19 crisis, the information in this section is particularly likely to change.