IRSN contributes to three new NEA projects to prepare the decommissioning of Fukushima Daiichi's damaged reactors

Along with their NEA peers, a number of IRSN experts will contribute actively to three projects to prepare for the decommissioning of the damaged Fukushima Daiichi reactors: one project to prepare the recovery and analysis of fuel debris (PreADES PreADES [http://www.oecd-nea.org/jointproj/preades.html]), another to examine the state of the damaged reactors (ARC-F) in more detail, and another to thermodynamically characterize the fuel debris and fission products (TCOFF).

IRSN intends to share its expertise internationally: by contributing to the synthesis of knowledge acquired from the Fukushima Daiichi accident, by contributing its expertise to the analysis of debris samples from the damaged reactors, by upgrading its thermodynamic databases (NUCLEA, MEPHISTA).

IRSN expects that its participation in these three projects will help to strengthen its expertise capacity on severe accidents: it will gain a better understanding of the limits of the various tools and methods it has developed through its studies and research, by applying them to the reality of an accident that has been thoroughly analyzed.