PANDA Passive nuclear power plant cooling systems [ Top ]

The main interest in the domain of reactor technology development lies presently on new light water reactors with passive safety systems. In the framework of an international co-operation, PSI is conducting the ALPHA project. In its central experimental facility PANDA, one investigates key functions of the long-term decay heat removal from the containment of such reactors. The tests were required by the US safety authority, the results are used for the certification process of a new reactor concept.

HOTLAB Large facility for material research on highly radio-active components/samples [ Top ]

The Hot Lab is a unique facility in Switzerland. It is well equipped to accept, separate, dispatch material for gross and highly specialized liquid and solid state materials. The competent personnel support the Swiss nuclear power stations in materials emergency questions, sustains university and industrial research, e.g. by improving fuel burn-up, thus reducing fuel cycle costs and waste. The hot lab is also used for research on radionuclide migration out of repositories and the geology and on high temperature material for next generation gas cooled reactors. Among many other projects it also offers the infrastructural basis for a NES participation in the PSI project MEGAPIE for liquid metal target development.

ARTIST Test facility for investigation of aerosol and iodine behaviour during severe accidents [ Top ]

In the ARTIST loop the retention of aerosols in case of tube break within a steam generator is investigated to test measures designed to retain the radioactive materials.

DRAGON Aerosol generation facility [ Top ]

The DRAGON is a multi-purpose aerosol generation facility to produce severe accident prototypical aerosol particles at specified thermal-hydraulic and aerosol conditions.

PROTEUS Light water test reactor at PSI [ Top ]

The PROTEUS zero power research reactor allows experimental programmes that provide data to consolidate the design and analysis techniques of the Swiss nuclear operators and their fuel suppliers. This facility is used to measure characteristic neutron reactions in actual boiling and pressurised water reactor fuel assemblies. The results allow validating computer codes and reducing unnecessarily large safety margins. PROTEUS has been also used to measure reactivity and neutron emission on segments of power reactor fuel with a wide range of burn-ups and at present part-length rod assemblies are investigated.

MICRO-XAS XAFS Beamline at the Swiss Light Source SLS [ Top ]

The microXAS beamline is a microprobe facility optimized for X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS), X-ray fluorescence (XRF) and X-ray diffraction (XRD) experiments requiring high spatial resolution (down to 1 x 1 ?m2). As a special feature microbeam experiments with radioactive samples can be conducted. This fact allows NES researchers to obtain in-depth molecular-level information on nuclear energy related materials.