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Background, Scope and Objectives of the Workshop

SWINTH-2019 is meant to create an opportunity for scientists and technologists involved in the development and application of advanced instrumentation and measurement techniques, and active either in thermal-hydraulics (TH) and/or severe accident (SA) research, to meet, identify and share their own progresses and ideas, discuss on open technological issues including further needs for TH and/or SA experiments, model development and code validation, and to identify the edges of the state-of-the-art and the prospects for future advancements.

The scope of the workshop includes the following topics and aspects:

  • Water cooled nuclear reactor accident phenomena: defence-in-depth level one through four.
  • Scale and complexity of experiments and phenomena: from basic through separate and integral effect tests to investigate any phenomena of postulated accidents.
  • Purpose of the experiments: understanding of phenomena and processes for an accident and its analysis; support to model development and code validation; safety demonstration (licensing).
  • Types of measurement technique: local and/or space-averaged instantaneous and/or time averaged quantities of single-phase and/or multi-phase/multi-component flows, fields and structures/materials, with sufficiently fine resolution and uncertainty quantification; e.g. visualization techniques and optical, radiographic and tomographic methods to measure temperature, pressure, velocity, void, chemical and phase composition, detection of radiation/FPs and fissile materials; fission product speciation.
  • Innovation in measurement techniques/methods and/or their application.
  • Possible use of simulant fluids with well-established scaling laws.
  • Correspondence between experimental technique, resulting measurement and applicability to different code types (i.e., system TH, sub-channel analysis, CFD, containment TH, and SA.)
  • Fluid-structure interaction, molten-core-coolant interaction and molten-core-structure interaction.
  • Gaps between current model/code validation needs and existing technology; definition of requirements for new experiments and instrumentation, also in terms of “quality” of data.
  • Measurement uncertainty evaluation depending on type of instruments and measurement method with possible influence of TH and/or SA phenomena to simulate.
  • Issues related to the handling and preservation of experimental data.
  • Specifically concerning instruments for SA-related experiments: major challenges and solutions, improvements and advancements, being proposed, under development and/or already in use, including those in the light of lessons-learned from Fukushima-Daiichi accident.

This workshop follows up the earlier Specialists Workshop on Advanced Instrumentation and Measurement Techniques for Nuclear Reactor Thermal Hydraulics (SWINTH), held in Livorno, Italy, on 15-17 June 2016, organized by the SILENCE Network. Looking further back, the OECD/NEA/CSNI Specialists Meeting on Advanced Instrumentation and Measurement Techniques, held on 17-20 March 1997, in Santa Barbara, California, USA, was the last international workshop fully dedicated to the same topic.

SWINTH-2019 combines the respective experiences and roles of OECD/NEA/CSNI/WGAMA and SILENCE in a joint organizational effort on a common goal.
A new feature, moreover, is represented by the extension of the scope of the workshop to SA-related experimentation: both a challenge and an opportunity, for the SA and TH communities, to meet and engage in a fruitful technical interaction.

Why Livorno?! Here’s why...