Nuclear Safety Research

The safety of nuclear installations is based on a set of technical and organizational measures implemented by nuclear operators at various stages in the life of their facilities. Nuclear safety research provides scientific and technical knowledge on the corresponding subjects, both for the definition and justification of the measures adopted, and for their assessment by safety organizations.

Given the multiplicity and complexity of the issues to be addressed, this research is often carried out within the framework of broad national or international collaborations involving research organizations such as CEA, technical experts such as IRSN, and nuclear operators such as EDF or AREVA. These partnerships make it possible to increase the efficiency of the resources deployed through networking, and to maintain, or even develop, major research tools dedicated to the safety of nuclear installations.

Most of our research programs involve a combination of analytical experiments, integral experiments and numerical simulations. They are complemented by upstream research aimed at gaining a deeper understanding of the elementary phenomena involved. This upstream research is the ideal forum for collaboration with "academic" research carried out by university laboratories.

The aim of this article is to present a general overview of nuclear safety research, with an emphasis on the national dimension, but also mentioning the main links with international research. It therefore focuses on the types of facilities currently operating in France, and does not deal with problems specific to reactors other than pressurized water reactors. It comprises two parts:

• general information explaining the main reasons for the research, presenting the results of the research and the approach most often used, and briefly describing the main players in the research;

• a description of the main areas of safety research. Given the diversity of the subjects covered, this second part is clearly not exhaustive, and some areas are not covered, such as the development of methods for assessing uncertainties or the performance of probabilistic safety studies.

This article is complemented by a second article entitled "Safety research. Experimental platforms and software" [BN 3 836] presents some examples of the major experimental platforms used worldwide for safety research, as well...