Meeting of Specialists on the Reliability of Decay Heat Removal Systems for Fast Reactors. Summary Report

The Specialists Meeting on Reliability of Decay Heat Removal Systems proposed for Fast Reactors was sponsored by the UKAEA Safety & Reliability Directorate and held at Harwell between 28th April and 1st May, 1975. The meeting was attended by delegates from six countries - (USA, Federal Republic of Germany, France, Japan, USSR and the UK). A list of participants is included in an Appendix to this report. The subject matter of the meeting was concerned with the degree to which the ability to maintain decay heat removal from a fast reactor after shutdown in normal and abnormal circumstances could be guaranteed by design provisions and substantiated by reliability analysis techniques, operational testing etc. Consideration of conditions prevailing after a hypothetical core melt down incident were not included in the subject matter. The deliberations of the meeting were focussed at each working session on a defined theme and its dependant topics as shown in the detailed Agenda included in this report. Although provision had been made in the Agenda for a limited amount of discussion of the decay heat rejection problems of Gas Cooled Fast Reactors, delegates had no contributions to offer on this subject. During each session a Recording Secretary prepared a summary of the main points made by national delegates and of the resulting recommendations and conclusions. These draft summaries were made available to delegates during subsequent sessions of the meeting and approved by them for inclusion in the Summary, General Conclusions and Recommendations provided under Table of Contents (item 3 and 4)