An Overview of TACIS and PHARE Nuclear Safety Projects Related to Thermalhydraulics

Since 1991, the European Commission has been supporting the transition in Eastern countries through the TACIS Programme (for the New Independent States) and PHARE Programme (for the Central Eastern European Countries). One priority for Tacis or Phare funding is nuclear safety. In Nuclear Safety, the countries mainly concerned are Russia, Ukraine, Armenia, and Kazakhstan for TACIS, and Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovak Republic, Lithuania, Romania and Slovenia for the PHARE. In these programmes, the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission (EC) is providing its Technical & Scientific Expertise in Design Safety, On-Site Assistance and Dissemination of project results for: ¿EC Directorate General External Relations, responsible for the programming of TACIS projects. ¿EC-EuropeAid, in charge of identification and implementation of all TACIS projects. ¿EC Directorate General Enlargement, responsible for PHARE projects. Several TACIS and PHARE projects (performed in the past or going on) are related to thermalhydraulics applied to accident analyses/severe accident analyses and accident management in VVER and RBMK reactor types. These projects included the development and application of Eastern codes but also the transfer and use of Western codes together with Western technologies, analysis experience, know-how and training Eastern experts on the use of the codes. This paper gives an overview of these projects carried so far during more than a decade. It details in particular the objectives and the results obtained, assessing the main achievements and summarising the open issues.JRC.F.5-Nuclear operation safet