CSARP / MCAP Meeting and MELCOR Users Workshop, Rockville, Maryland, USA, 4. – 15. 6. 2018

After a severe accident in the Fukushima nuclear power plant, nuclear safety standards have been increased. Consequently, severe-accident analyses are becoming an integral part of safety reports. To verify the analysis of severe accidents independently the MELCOR computer program is used, which can be obtained through participation in the U.S. NRC international cooperative research program CSARP (Cooperative Severe Accident Research Program). Slovenia has been a member of the CSARP program since the end of 2015, and has participated in it also in the period 1998-2005. As part of the CSARP research program, the CSARP/MCAP (MELCOR Code Assessment Program) is taking place every year in the USA. Because the use of the program is spread all over the world, the yearly meetings are also takin place in Europe (EMUG - European MELCOR User Group) and Asia (AMUG - Asian MELCOR User Group).

This year's CSARP / MCAP meeting took place in Rockville, Maryland, USA from 5th to 8th June 2018. Participants from 21 countries attended the meeting.  At the meeting the U.S. NRC, which runs CSARP program, MELCOR developers from Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA, and CSARP partners presented their activities. The meeting was divided into the following sections:

• Severe accidents research - activities, computer programs and experiments,
• Reactor analyses and analyses of the spent fuel pool,
• Corium cooling,
• Specific topics in the field of severe accidents,
• Application and evaluation of the MELCOR program.

After the meeting, from 11th to 15th June, the workshop for users of the MELCOR program took place. The workshop was held in the form of lectures by MELCOR developers and participants' exercise on their computers.

Meetings and workshop were attended by dr. Matjaž Leskovar from the Jožef Stefan Institute Reactor Engineering Division, who is the Slovenian coordinator for cooperation within the CSARP research program. At the CSARP meeting, he chaired the section "Severe Accident Research: Computer Programs and Experiments", and at the MCAP meeting, he held a presentation entitled "Overview of MELCOR Activities in Slovenia".