State-of-the-Art Report (SOAR) on Nuclear Aerosols

The Committee on the Safety of Nuclear Installations (CSNI) mandated the preparation of a SOAR with four main objectives:

• to assess the status of existing experimental data and analytical capabilities required for predicting aerosol source terms from LWR accidents;
• to address the strengths and weaknesses of the codes used to predict aerosol behaviour in the reactor coolant circuit and containment, and provide validation results and uncertainties, in particular for plant applications;
• to summarise findings from recent ISP exercises on nuclear aerosols and related thermal-hydraulic behaviour in the reactor coolant circuit and containment;
• to identify safety-relevant pending issues and to propose research activities that will reduce gaps in the understanding of relevant processes and deficiencies in modelling capabilities.

The Nuclear Aerosol Writing Group met several times over a three-year period from 2003 to 2006 to prepare the current SOAR, which provides a survey of issues surrounding the prediction of nuclear aerosol behaviour in the primary system and containment.