The SOCRATES project addresses critical gaps in our understanding of the liquid source term during severe nuclear accidents and offers innovative solutions to mitigate and monitor the release of radionuclides into the environment. The project contributes to the mid-to-long-term management of nuclear power plants after a severe accident by enhancing safety, environmental protection, safe waste management and public well-being. The main contributions of the topical project are: - Enhanced understanding of liquid source term - New computer models for the liquid source term phenomena - Innovative absorbent materials to effectively trap key radionuclide species, particularly Cs and Sr - Miniature size radiochemical laboratory for radionuclides - Education and training for nuclear safety - Recommendations for long-term operations, waste management and severe accident management strategies. The management of possible leakages of contaminated water, which may happen more frequently due to aging of reactor components and joints, will gain new remedies from SOCRATES results to tackle and mitigate the contaminants inside the plant. The project's research on the liquid source term directly impacts a majority of existing and new nuclear reactors, encompassing diverse reactor designs and technologies. Recommendations based on SOCRATES results will support nuclear community on international scale by giving guidelines how to manage liquid source term. Developed computer models for the analysis of liquid source term phenomena will benefit industry, safety authorities and research community in the safety assessments of NPPs. The models developed in SOCRATES will be implemented in severe accident analysis codes, such as AC2 and ASTEC. When the design of new sorbent materials for radionuclides will be performed with computer simulations, it will enhance the digitalization of safety developments, and enable considerations of multiple sorbent composition variations with low cost.

The EASI-SMR project intends to address the safety issues related to the LW-SMR in order to provide advances that should support implementation of such technologies as soon as possible. The EASI SMR project activities are aimed at ensuring that these reactors will be designed, constructed, commissioned and operated in the safest possible way and in accordance with existing regulations. The consortium was carefully chosen so that the research entities can provide the necessary research teams and support facilities across the European Continent and beyond. EASI-SMR will address the safety issues associated with major LW-SMR innovations: Passive systems Soluble Boron-free cores Co-generation and hybridation Additive manufacturing to improve compactness of Nuclear Steam Supply System Multi-units operation The work aims to provide insights for European LW-SMR projects, in particular: NUWARD SMR, a French design of a reactor generating 170 MW of electricity production. LDR-50, a Finnish design of a district heating reactor of 50 MW EASI-SMR is closely linked with NUGENIA TA6 and the European SMR pre-Partnerships WS5.

The Gathering expertise On Vibration ImpaKt In Nuclear power Generation (GO-VIKING) project takes over from the VIKING initiative that started in 2020 as an in-kind collaborative effort of European vendors, utilities, technical safety organizations, universities, and research organizations to improve the understanding and the prediction of flow-induced vibration (FIV) phenomena, relevant to nuclear power reactors. Preventive measures against FIV should be taken in the component design and during the operation of the nuclear steam supply system (NSSS) to avoid structural wear, damage or even incidental or accidental scenarios with potential radioactivity release to the environment. The overall objective of GO-VIKING is to increase the expertise and improve the tools and skills of the European nuclear stakeholders for the analysis of complex FIV phenomena in order to maintain and enhance nuclear plant safety. This will be accomplished by: - Generation of high-resolution numerical and experimental data of FIV in single and multiphase flows. - Development and validation of high- and medium-resolution, as well as fast-running practical tools for the FIV analysis - Implementation of efficient methods for uncertainty propagation in the FIV results - Synthesis of best practice guidelines for FIV analysis in accordance with the needs of the stakeholders - Targeted training of graduates and young experts as well as practitioners from stakeholders in FIV-related phenomena and modelling techniques The GO-VIKING project will improve the safety of contemporary reactors and the design evaluation of new concepts by making available new experimental results and improved numerical approaches for the evaluation of FIV. These will allow the nuclear operators to enhance the prediction of FIV phenomena in key NSSS components, and the vendors to improve the design of the relevant equipment, thus leading to increased reliability, availability, and safety of the European NPPs.

PASTELS aims to significantly increase the knowledge within Europe of innovative passive systems, namely SACOs and CWCs, and the ability of several European system and CFD computational codes to be able to accurately model key phenomena such as natural circulation loops and condensation. This is very challenging due to their very specific properties, i.e. small driving forces working against high resistive forces which are specific to the concept of these technologies. Given the growing use of the SACO and CWC technologies in non-European NPPs, it is essential, especially with the foreseen future use of Small Medium Reactors (SMR) that the European nuclear community is able to adapt its current numerical tools to this promising technology. Extensive experimental testing (SET, CET and integral experiments) with representative operating conditions on semi-industrial full scale test facilities (PKL facility [DE] and PASI facility [FI]) will provide essential data to support the improvement of the numerical activities. Existing data from PERSEO and HERO-2 facilities will also be used. The numerical and experimental activities will be conducted in an integrated step-by-step approach. PASTELS will investigate improvements to models, novel methodologies for the coupling of system and CFD codes working at different scales. Additionally, important knowledge on the behaviour of the SACO and CWC will be captured through the observation of their behaviour during the test campaigns. Different and similar computational codes will be used by the partners in order to be able to benchmark and compare the different results obtained, understand the causes and propose strategies to improve them. All project results will feed into extensive methodology guidelines and a roadmap to achieving licensing and implementation of these innovative passive system technologies in future European NPPs.