According to a Memorandum of Understanding document obtained by the National Journal, DOE and NRC are working together to simulate Japan’s Fukushima Daichii nuclear accident in order to validate its computer models for how reactor cores respond to accident conditions. The simulation is meant to inform NRC’s Fukushima lessons learned efforts. According to NJ, the study, which will use publicly available data from Tokyo Electric Power Co., is expected to cost roughly $1.2 million.
Specifically, the join work will reconstruct the events that occurred at Fukushima in order to characterize them for the purpose of accident mitigation and response. More importantly, the data will be use to test the validity of severe accident modeling.
Glad to see NRC and DOE are working cooperatively on something.
