Fukushima Daiichi accident analyses continue to bring benefits to accident management

FRAME workshop, 2024

Delegates at the FRAME workshop at the ANL Conference Centre, Illinois, United States, on 27 September 2024.

Evaluations of the Fukushima Daiichi accident continue to bring significant benefits to the management of accidents in operating and advanced reactors and are expected to continue doing so in the future. This is one of the main conclusions of the FRAME workshop, organised by the Argonne National Laboratory (ANL), US Department of Energy (DOE), Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) and Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) and held at the ANL premises on 26-27 September 2024.

The workshop was attended by 110 participants from 15 countries, 45 national organisations and 3 international organisations, including from industry, regulators, research organisations, technical support organisations and universities. High-level representatives of these stakeholders were invited to present their views on major insights gained from the Fukushima Daiichi accident management and analysis, knowledge gaps and emerging issues for accident management and analysis for operating and advanced reactors, related research capabilities needs and stakeholder engagement and sustainable research funding. The workshop facilitated exchanges between decision-makers and several NEA projects operating agents regarding potentials for future projects.

FRAMEIt was agreed that collaborative research efforts should continue to maximise the benefits of the Fukushima Daiichi accident analyses, recognising that there are several remaining knowledge gaps about the accident, e.g. regarding reactor vessel rupture, ex-vessel phenomena and radioactive release, that should be addressed by future investigations.

In addition, several emerging safety research topics related to advanced reactors were identified, including related to the long-term reliability of passive safety systems, the assessment of radioactive releases and emergency planning zones, and emerging technologies (e.g. artificial intelligence). It was noted that international co-operation and stakeholder support are vital to safety research. The current NEA joint projects frameworks are recognised as being pragmatic and efficient for managing collaborative research among a range of organisations with sometimes competing interest. However, it was recommended that additional support from industry and government be sought by increasing awareness of NEA project benefits.

Long-term strategic plans could also be developed by incorporating research priorities from diverse stakeholders to foster broader engagement and to secure funding. It was also noted that the co-ordination of collaborative projects in the thermal-hydraulic and severe accident areas should be enhanced, with several new research capabilities becoming accessible for collaboration and offering the potential to address emerging issues. This could be achieved by the NEA organising platforms with complementary facilities, allowing benchmarking experiments and addressing scaling.

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