Safety Research for Nuclear Reactors

Energy > Nuclear Waste Management and Safety as well as Radiation Research - All Topics

Although Germany decided to shut down all nuclear reactors for energy production until 2022, own reactor safety research is needed in future. The preservation of competence in nuclear engineering is essential for the safety assessment of nuclear power plants and nuclear projects in Germany and abroad. Only in that way Germany is able to influence international safety standards and to participate in international research projects.

Based on this background the work within the topic “Reactor Safety” is concentrated on the research on safety aspects of currently operating nuclear reactors and new reactor types being under development in the neighboring countries. It covers the development of methods for analyses of transients and postulated accidents, the investigation of ageing phenomena in materials and integrity of components, and the safety related aspects connected with the thermal fluid dynamics of cooling water or liquid metal flows. Especially after the Fukushima accident in 2011, the efforts on the investigation of accident management measures in nuclear reactors have been increased.

Objectives

• Development and validation of neutron kinetic and thermal hydraulic methods for the analysis of design basis and severe accidents for nuclear reactors.
• Development and qualification of predictive Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) models for two-phase flows
• Conduction of industry-grade experiments for code validation using innovative measuring techniques (TOPFLOW facility)
• Exploration of the mechanisms of irradiation effects in reactor pressure vessel steels and Gen-IV candidate materials by means of nanostructural characterization, atomistic modelling and mechanical testing

Press Releases

• Zeit gewinnen, Unfälle ­vermeiden

Involved HZDR institutes

• Institute of Resource Ecology
• Institute of Fluid Dynamics

Collaborations

• HZDR is a member of the "Kompetenz­verbund Ost für Kerntechnik".
• HZDR participates in the NURESAFE project of the EU.

Contacts

• Dr. Sören Kliem
• Dr. Eberhard Altstadt
• Dr. Dirk Lucas

Publications

• Rachamin, R.; Barkleit, A.; Konheiser, J. et al.
  Radiological characterization of selected Siemens/KWU PWR components using the MCNP-FLUKA code sequence
  Annals of Nuclear Energy 233(2026), 112265 (10.1016/j.anucene.2026.112265)
• Klupś, P.; Jenkins, B. M.; Chekhonin, P. et al.
  On the solute segregation to grain boundaries in SA508 steel
  Journal of Materials Research and Technology 270(2026), 163-173 (10.1016/j.jmst.2026.01.027)
• Biswas, A.; Lindroos, M.; Grilli, N. et al.
  Crystal plasticity modelling of carbide network effects on microstructural strain localization and fracture behaviour in bainitic steels
  European Journal of Mechanics - A/Solids 118(2026), 106044 (10.1016/j.euromechsol.2026.106044)
• Schäfer, J.; Taş, S.; Hampel, U.
  Gas bubble detection and segmentation using a machine learning approach leveraging semi-supervised training
  Nuclear Engineering and Design 449(2026), 114763 (10.1016/j.nucengdes.2026.114763)
• Putze, P.; Wolf, D.; Chekhonin, P. et al.
  Twisted and screw dislocation-driven growth of MoSe2 nanostructures by chemical vapor transport
  Nano Research 19(2026)1, 94908020 (10.26599/NR.2025.94908020)
• Rintala, A.; Bilodid, Y.
  Ants and DYN3D Solutions to the IAEA-Hex Kinetics Benchmark
  Nuclear Science and Engineering (2026) (10.1080/00295639.2025.2545613)
• Rachamin, R.; Barkleit, A.; Konheiser, J. et al.
  Neutron activation analysis of metal foils placed inside an ex-core instrumentation channel of a Siemens/KWU PWR
  Nuclear Engineering and Technology 58(2026)2, 103966 (10.1016/j.net.2025.103966)
• Zhang, H.; Liao, Y.; Yan, H. et al.
  Hydrodynamic Mechanisms of Deformable Bubble Pair Interactions at Varying Weber and Reynolds Numbers
  Physics of Fluids 37(2025), 093307 (10.1063/5.0287671)
• Rachamin, R.; Barkleit, A.; Konheiser, J. et al.
  Evaluation of the in- and ex-vessel neutron fluence distributions in a Siemens/KWU PWR
  Nuclear Engineering and Technology 57(2025)12, 103846 (10.1016/j.net.2025.103846)
• Manthey, J.; Ding, W.; Mehdipour, H. et al.
  Growth of a Single Bubble Due to Super-Saturation: Comparison of Correlation-Based Modelling with CFD Simulation
  ChemEngineering 9(2025), 63 (10.3390/chemengineering9030063)
• Zhang, H.; Höhne, T.
  Sensitivity and Optimization CFD Analysis of a Vane-type Pipe Separator based on the AIAD Model
  International Journal of Multiphase Flow 195(2026), 105510 (10.1016/j.ijmultiphaseflow.2025.105510)
• Lucas, D.
  Message from the Guest Editor of the 19th Multiphase Flow Conference Special Issue
  Experimental and Computational Multiphase Flow 7(2025), 149-150 (10.1007/s42757-025-0251-4)
• Soti, Z.; VanUffelen, P.; Schubert, A. et al.
  High-fidelity and high-resolution simulation of two different rod ejection accidents in a NuScale-like small modular reactor with conventional and accident tolerant fuels
  Nuclear Engineering and Design 441(2025), 114183 (10.1016/j.nucengdes.2025.114183)
• Pereira, V. S. M.; Radiguet, B.; Onorbe, E. et al.
  Assessment of Ni and Mn effect on the irradiation hardening behavior of VVER-1000 model steels exposed to high fluences in the high flux reactor
  Journal of Nuclear Materials 615(2025), 155932 (10.1016/j.jnucmat.2025.155932)
• Diaz Pescador, E.; Kosowski, K.; Schäfer, F. et al.
  Investigation of Two-Phase Critical Flow Phenomena during a Large-Break LOCA in a German PWR with the System Code ATHLET
  Nuclear Engineering and Design 441(2025), 114181 (10.1016/j.nucengdes.2025.114181)
• Molodov, D. A.; Brandenburg, J.-E.; Barrales‑Mora, L. A. et al.
  On the effect of inclination dependence of grain boundary energy on grain boundary migration in Al bicrystals
  Journal of Materials Science 60(2025), 20646-20661 (10.1007/s10853-025-10898-3)
• Was, G. S.; Cabet, C.; Kaden, C. et al.
  International Round Robin on Ion Irradiation of Alloy T91 and Comparison with Neutron Irradiation
  Journal of Nuclear Materials 616(2025), 156065 (10.1016/j.jnucmat.2025.156065)
• Putze, P.; Ritschel, T.; Chekhonin, P. et al.
  Creating chirality in WSe2 through screw dislocations by chemical vapor transport
  Nanoscale Horizons 10(2025), 944 (10.1039/d4nh00567h)
• Sánchez, M.; Cicero, S.; Obermeier, F. et al.
  On the Possibility of Extending the Crack Length Criterion in the Master Curve Methodology
  Journal of Pressure Vessel Technology 147(2025)2, 021302 (10.1115/1.4067434)
• Papadionysiou, M.; Bilodid, Y.; Fridman, E. et al.
  Verification of nTRACER/COBRA-TF with Serpent2/SUBCHANFLOW for full core high fidelity high-resolution analysis of VVERs
  Nuclear Engineering and Design 433(2025), 113855 (10.1016/j.nucengdes.2025.113855)
• Garcia-Villalba, M.; Colonius, T.; Desjardins, O. et al.
  Numerical Methods for Multiphase Flows
  International Journal of Multiphase Flow 191(2025), 105285 (10.1016/j.ijmultiphaseflow.2025.105285)
• Nikitin, E.; Fridman, E.
  A coordinate transformation method to simulate non-uniform radial deformation of nuclear reactor cores
  Annals of Nuclear Energy 216(2025), 111292 (10.1016/j.anucene.2025.111292)
• Smith, J.; Painter, B.; Fridman, E. et al.
  Extension and verification of multi-group JFNK-generated uniform discontinuity factors for nodal diffusion applications
  Annals of Nuclear Energy 223(2025), 111609 (10.1016/j.anucene.2025.111609)
• Wu, W.; Hampel, U.; Sun, B. et al.
  A numerical study on heat transfer and boiling crisis in twisted heat exchanger tubes
  International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 241(2025), 126745 (10.1016/j.ijheatmasstransfer.2025.126745)
• Nikitin, E.; Ponomarev, A.; Fridman, E.
  Analysis of loss of flow without scram test in the FFTF reactor: Coupled 3D neutronics and thermal hydraulics analysis with DYN3D/ATHLET code system
  Nuclear Engineering and Design 433(2025), 113833 (10.1016/j.nucengdes.2025.113833)
• Das, A.; Viehrig, H. W.; Bergner, F. et al.
  Effect of microstructural anisotropy on fracture toughness of hot rolled 13Cr ODS steel – the role of primary and secondary cracking
  Journal of Nuclear Materials 491(2017), 83-93 (10.1016/j.jnucmat.2017.04.059)
• Liao, Y.; Lucas, D.
  Computational modelling of flashing flows: a literature survey
  International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 111(2017), 246-265 (10.1016/j.ijheatmasstransfer.2017.03.121)
• Grahn, A.; Gommlich, A.; Kliem, S. et al.
  Simulation of an MSLB scenario using the 3D neutron kinetic core model Dyn3D coupled with the CFD software Trio U
  Nuclear Engineering and Design 315(2017), 117-127 (10.1016/j.nucengdes.2017.02.002)
• Höhne, T.; Gasiunas, S.; Šeporaitis, M.
  Numerical Modelling of a Direct Contact Condensation Experiment using the AIAD Framework
  International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 111(2017), 211-222 (10.1016/j.ijheatmasstransfer.2017.03.104)

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