IRSN and GRS released in June 2010 the first revision of the ASTEC V2.0 code (V2.0rev1) that accounted for the feedback of 1 year of maintenance efforts, plus a few model evolutions (Molten-Core-Concrete-Interaction in EPR-type core-catcher, improvement of the thermal-hydraulics behaviour for swollen water level volumes in the primary/secondary circuits, improved description of corium behaviour in the lower head up to its failure) and the full documentation of the ICARE core degradation module. This version will be assessed by the 26 SARNET partners during the 2nd period.
The 4th ASTEC Users’ Club was organized by IRSN and GRS and hosted by GRS in Köln (Germany) on October 11-14, 2010. It gathered 45 users from 24 organizations. During this 4-day workshop, the progress of the technical work has been covered through 25 presentations by partners. Two presentations focussed on the post-processing tools, along with an on-line demonstration. And 3 more presentations have allowed getting a good overview of the ASTEC activities performed outside Europe by a few non-SARNET partners (BARC and AERB in India and RRC-KI in Russia). As usually, such meeting offered the opportunity to launch very fruitful discussions among code users and code developers (even more discussions than in previous similar meetings) about both the capabilities and weaknesses of the current V2.0 code version to support best-estimate safety analyses and about the perspectives for modelling improvements to become available in 2012 in the next ASTEC V2 major version (ASTEC V2.1).

Contact: Patrick Chatelard
patrick.chatelard@irsn.fr