The kick-off meeting of SEvere Accident Research and Knowledge ManagemenT (SEAKNOT) for LWRS  project took place in Madrid, from 3 to 5 October 2022, at CIEMAT’s headquarters.

This project, funded by the Horizon Europe EURATOM 2027 programme, is led by CIEMAT, and constituted by 17 well-known organisations from 10 countries: UPM (Spain); IRSN, CEA and LGI (France); ENEA and UNIPI (Italy), KIT, BECKER Technologies, FZJ and FRAMATOME GmbH (Germany); JSI (Slovenia); KTH (Sweden); UJV (Czech Republic); VTT (Finland); TRACTEBEL (Belgium); and PSI (Switzerland, as associated partner).

The four-year project aim is two-fold: to shape up a roadmap for severe accident research in the coming ten years to achieve a substantial reduction of remaining uncertainties and measurable progress in the practical elimination of radiological consequences; and, no less important, to efficiently manage the knowledge and knowhow transfer to the young generation of nuclear scientists and engineers. The first purpose would require: to build a Phenomena Identification and Ranking Table; to develop a relational database directory to help identifying validation experiments in each of the areas that a severe accident is traditionally split into, and to map the European experimental platforms that would be necessary to address the issues considered worth by means of networking in a sort of experimental platforms. The second purpose will be targeted with initiatives such as the Severe Accident Phenomenology (SAP) course, the ERMSAR (European Review Meeting on Severe Accident Research) event, a second edition of the Severe Accident book issued by SARNET (Severe Accident Research NETwork) more than ten years ago; and a good number of dissemination activities. All these activities and more will be supported by the ambitious mobility programme within the project.

In this first plenary meeting, Luis Enrique Herranz, the coordinator, illustrated in details the objectives and the workplan of the project. Work package leaders discussed the scientific challenges and a list of action items was defined.

For more information on the project, visit the European Commission database.