A new research program on accidents in spent fuel pools. The DENOPI project

In the framework of the post-Fukushima actions, an experimental project named DENOPI has been launched by Institut de Radioprotection et de Surete Nucleaire in collaboration with research laboratories with the aim to study the behavior of spent fuel pools under loss of cooling and loss of coolant conditions. This paper describes the objectives and the strategy of this program which includes experiments at different scales and simulations based on CFD and system codes. Some results obtained on fuel cladding degradation due to oxidation under air/steam mixtures are also reported in the last section. (author)