Assessment of the research reactors in opposition to severe accidents

Occurrence of the Severe Accidents (SAs) in Research Reactors (RRs) according to the safety standards of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), despite the low probability of occurrence should be analyzed. Scattered researches have been conducted on the behavior of the RRs in the face of SAs. In this study, an attempt has been made to summarize the results of this research in order to provide a comprehensive reference in the field of the SAs analysis for RRs, the phenomena related to SAs and the available SA analysis tools in RRs. Furthermore, a strategy based on coupling of the RELAP-SCDAP4.0 and MELCOR1.8.6 codes for SA analysis in RRs is presented. The achieved results show that the SAs analysis for RRs depends on the reactor type and its fuel needs to be investigated in order to adopt an appropriate management strategy in the face of these accidents. Also results show that by adopting few assumptions, SAs analysis codes for power reactors can also be used for RRs, too.