FONESYS-UG Founding Motivation

The field of interest is nuclear thermal-hydraulics and whatever (as far as possible) in nuclear reactor technology has an interface with nuclear thermal-hydraulics. The focus is the application of nuclear thermal-hydraulics to nuclear reactor safety and design. The reactors of interest are water cooled nuclear reactors. We should attempt to predict and, as far as possible, to streamline and/or to direct the evolution of research in the concerned field. Furthermore, we keep in mind that wide range of major research projects have been conducted in nuclear reactor thermal-hydraulics subject area (i.e. the concerned field), which brought us to the current knowledge level and status. First of all, we should recognize that huge amount of resources have been invested primarily in the past and those resources will never be available again in any forecast for the next foreseeable future. Secondly, we are in a controversial situation as follows: On the one hand, we can be satisfied because NPPs are in operation as designed and safety (and safety margins) involving nuclear thermal-hydraulics can be evaluated and the evaluations fulfill licensing regulations and criteria during the licensing process, on the other hand, insufficient knowledge characterizes fundamental elements like turbulence and complex transient 3D phenomena. We (the authors) fully recognize that we have to take note of the needs from participants, rather than proposing anything; still we preferred to prepare this document to facilitate participants in expressing their visions. In addition, whatever expressed below (as well as by participants during the ‘short’ founding FONESYS-UG kick-off meeting) may result unsubstantiated because of lack of details. In the forthcoming FONESYS-UG meeting proper details must be added (starting from the topics of interest).