APAL conducts three workshops and a final seminar during the project lifetime open to consortium partners, students, members of the Advisory Board and interested end-users such as NPP owners, suppliers and regulatory bodies.

Final Seminar

In this final seminar, experts closely involved with APAL present an overview of the four years project's progress. The final seminar offers a concise summary of the advanced deterministic and probabilistic integrity analyses of RPVs under pressurized thermal shock (PTS) loading. Emphasis is placed on the insights gained throughout the project, encapsulating valuable lessons learned. The culmination of the seminar represents an opportunity to review the outcomes achieved through the advanced PTS analysis conducted by professionals. These insights serve as a crucial resource for various stakeholders in the nuclear power industry, including plant owners, suppliers, regulatory bodies, and other relevant parties. The final seminar will take place from 17th – 18th September 2024 in Paris, France.

End-user workshop

Ahead of the 'end-user workshop', experts involved in the APAL project defined a best-practice guide for the deterministic and probabilistic assessment of advanced Pressurized Thermal Shock (PTS) analysis for integrity assessment of RPVs. The guide incorporates improved methodologies and provides recommendations for assessing various types of uncertainties in thermo-hydraulic (TH) analysis, propagation of uncertainties throughout the entire PTS assessment, human factor, WRS solutions, WPS methods, etc. These are essential aspects for Long-Term Operation (LTO) of nuclear power plants. The draft best-practice guide was distributed to registered participants before the end-user workshop and summarises the experience accumulated by the professionals in advanced PTS analysis, serving as a valuable resource for nuclear power plant owners, suppliers, regulatory bodies, and other stakeholders. The end-user workshop was held to inform potential users, foster discussions, and collect feedback to refine the guidance. This workshop took place from 14th-15th May 2024 in Warsaw, Poland.

Advanced workshop

The 'advanced workshop', based on a training programme developed in the second half of the project, focussed on advanced methods and LTO improvements for RPV integrity analyses with focus on pressurised thermal shock (PTS) loading. The intermediate progress made in the project was made visible, regarding thermal-hydraulic best-estimate plus uncertainty analyses, as well as deterministic and probabilistic fracture mechanics analyses. This workshop took place from 11th-12th May 2023 in Ljubljana, Slovenia.

State of the art workshop

During the 'state of the art workshop' experts provided an overview the procedures currently applied to the integrity assessment of RPVs subjected to PTS loading. Moreover, the current state of the art for LTO improvements was presented. The participants got familiar with ordinary software tools and methods (deterministic and probabilistic) used for thermal hydraulics and fracture mechanics calculations. The aim is a better understanding of the different steps of PTS assessment and their technical background. The basics of probabilistic, thermal hydraulics, system behaviour and fracture mechanics were taught in comprehensive lessons.This workshop took place from 30th-31st March 2022 in Switzerland.