As the SACO will remain in the PKL facility after the end of the PASTELS project, an integral test facility will be available in Europe to further investigate the SACO behaviour under various operational and accidental transients (e.g. steam generator tube rupture).
Moreover, other components to be tested in the future will take benefit from the modifications made to the PKL test facility. Hence, once the investigations of the vertical SACO are completed, the vertical SACO could be easily substituted with other test components.
The PASI test campaign will close a major gap in European knowledge base about low-pressure open loop naturally circulating heat removal systems. The tests will shed light on the performance and failure modes of passive systems having no moving parts, creating a foundation for passive safety system analysis both in the deterministic and probabilistic domains. This enables subsequent assessment of passive systems’ reliability and their potential to reduce plant-level risk of nuclear reactors.
