Achieving emergency preparedness through drills and training

Framatome has an emergency response organization to provide technical assistance to a utility in case they experience degraded plant situations. The experts in different technical fields who are members of the organization are trained through technical sessions and emergency drills during which accidents and, more specifically, serious accidents are simulated. Typically, severe accidents are analyzed by specialists in a specific field or domain, e.g. containment response, hydrogen generation, corium/concrete interaction, fission product source terms, etc. Simulators are not yet sophisticated enough to handle this type of accident (core melt) and fail to produce the overall view incorporating all of the relevant phenomena, which is necessary for efficient crisis management. The paper explains how emergency drills run with very diverse accident scenarios as well as training dispensed to experts on different aspects of accidents are an effective means of integrating all of the expert domains and providing the experts with an overall view on serious accidents