The four-year AMHYCO (Towards An Enhanced Accident Management Of The Hydrogen/CO Combustion Risk) project began on 1 October and is being led by Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM) with a number of project partners*.
A statement said the project will target an area that has not been addressed in previous EU and OECD projects: hydrogen and carbon monoxide (H2/CO) combustion risk management in severe accidents for nuclear power plants. The statement did not say how much funding was involved, but said the project had received a grant from Horizon 2020, the biggest EU Research and innovation programme with nearly €80bn of funding available over seven years, from 2014 to 2020.
“Surprisingly, the severe accident management guidelines (SAMG), which guide the operational crew to handle the response of the nuclear power plant against severe accidents, have not been updated according to the knowledge gained in the last decade resulting from recent and ongoing projects,” a statement on the project said.
The project has three specific objectives. Firstly, to improve the SAMG for both in-vessel and ex-vessel phases with respect to combustible gases risk management; to investigate phenomena that are difficult to predict numerically; and to improve the predictability of the numerical tools.
The project will have an end-user group to provide information on achievements, seek feedback and attract potential future users. Email project coordinator Gonzalo Jiménez (gonzalo.jimenez@upm.es).
* The project partners are Spain’s Centre for Energy, Environment and Technology Research; the French Institute for Radiological Protection and Nuclear Safety (IRSN); the National Centre for Scientific Research and consulting company LGI (France); research institution FZJ, Framatome and Rurh-Universität Bochum (Germany); the Jožef Stefan Institute (Slovenia); the private scientific research company Energorisk (Ukraine); and Netherlands-based research company NRG, which operates the Petten research reactor, and Canadian Nuclear Laboratories. The project also has an advisotry board with experts in combustion science, accident management and nuclear safety.
