ML20212M176
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't OCT 4 1976 Mr. Arthur W. Rovine Department of State '
Washington, D.C. 20520
Dear Mr. Rovine:
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i 8ACKGROUND INFORMATION ON AGREEMENT CONCERNING A JOINT PROJECT FOR PLANNING, DESIGN, EXPERIMENT PREPARATION, PERFORMANCE AND REPORTING OF REACTOR SAFETY EXPERIMENTS CONCERNING CONTAllMENT RESPONSE i
The enclosed statement is in response to your request of September 16, 1976 for infomation en the Marviken II Agreement.
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$1ncerely.
0." an,t sin nea y l'*ida c. xorry,,
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- i Alfred H. Spano, Special Assistant l i for International Research Programs
- i Office of Nuclear Regulatory Research I
Enclosure:
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STATEMENT REGARDING AN AGREEMENT CONCERNING A JOINT PROJECT FOR PLANNING, DESIGN, EXPERIMENT PREPARATION, PERFORMANCE AND REPORTING OF REACTOR SAFETY EXPERIMENTS CONCERNING CONTAIMENT RESPONSE Signed by official representatives of the participating agencies at their official locations over a period of time from January 24, 1975 to July 7, 1975.
. Explanation of Agreement The agreement establishes the working relationships betwee% the participating countries (France, Federal Republic of Germany, Japan, U.S.A., Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden) to carry out a series of nonnuclear containment response tests in the Swedish Marviken reactor facility. The agreement describes the experimental program, instrumentation, project organization, budget, schedule and reporting procedures.
I The agreement provides for a two-tier mana ament structure: a project board for overall direction and a technica advisory committee for technical direction. Each contracting party is entitled to one
. representative on the project board and has a number of votes in proportion to its financial contribution. The U.S. contributes 20%
of the total budget. The Swedish Aktiebolaget Atomenergi (AES) appoints the project manager subject to the approval of the project board. The AES msnber to the board is also the chairman of the board.
The technical advisory committee is comprised of two senior technical experts from each contracting party having a 20% share of the total budget and one senior technical expert from each contracting party having less than a 20% share. The chairman of the project board chairs the meetings of the technical advisory connittee.
The test program consists of approximately eight depressurization or i " blowdown" experiments conducted under varying conditions of flow, and contairinent prepurging, pool volume and vent systen geometry. These tests are aimed at developing an understanding of the behavior of a boiling water reactor containment system under conditions similar to those encountered in a hypothetical loss-of-coolant accident. Such an accident begins with a postulated pipe break that leads to a system blowdown as the reactor steam / water escapes through the broken pipe.
The containment system is provided as a backup structure to contain the effluent from this hypothetical accident.
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2 The overall program schedule in the agreement called for starting the initial engineering work on February 1,1975 and completing the total program by April 1, 1977. The total budget is estimated to be 14.5 million Swedish kroner (about $3.6 million). Payments are made to AES on a quarterly basis based on cost estimates. The contracting parties also provide personnel to the project staff as a part of their contribuion to the total budget.
In return for its participation, the U.S. receives all of the technical reports and may assign personnel to follow the program on a first hand basis. Patents belong to the country of origin.
- AES maintains liability insurance.
Further parties may be added to the project upon agreement of the existing parties. Termination settlement of disputes are described.
Backaround Infonnation on Neactiations On March 18,1973, the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission joined a cooperative research program with AES, the principal Swedish nuclear research
( organization, comitting the Regulatory staff of the AEC to participation in the remainder of a series of 16 nonnuclear safety experiments in the Swedish Marviken reactor facility. The experiments, which ran from August 13, 1972 to April 5, 1973, were designed to evaluate the facility containment response to ruptures of pipe systems and the subsequent blowdown of the primary system. These experiments are being used to test analytical models which in turn can be used to evaluate the safety margins on the containment systems of U.S. nuclear power plants.
l Because of certain pressure oscillations which were observed in this first set of experiments it was believed that a second set of experiments was needed to develop an understanding of the physical factars which influenced the development of these pressure oscillations.
This new Marviken program and the various draft agreements associated with it were under active discussion by both the Division of W b Safety Research and the Division of Technical Review in the U.S. AEC from mid-1974 to early 1975. Technical and legal comments were provided to the AES during 1974 and in a TWX dated November 20, 1974, the U.S. AEC indicated to the AES that the U.S. AEC would be ready to sign the agreement provided that a minimum of four paying participants sign the
! same agreement and that the U.S. AEC financial contribution would not exceed 20% of the 14.5 million Swedish kroner budget. These conditions were met, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Comission (NRC) approved the agreement and it was signed by the official NRC representative on February 20, 1975.
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3 Effect of Agreement
' . The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Comission (NRC) expects to gain valua'ble -
information on the influence of certain containment features on the pressure oscillations discovered in the first series of Marviken tests.
This knowledge will be very useful in developing improved computer models relating to the contafrnent response of a nuclear reactor to a postulated loss-of-coolant accident.
NRC will have representatives on both the project board and the technical advisory comittee. In this manner the NRC will be able to influence the test program to maximize the benefits to the NRC safety studies.
. In addition, NRC will have direct access to the test data and can make real time use of this information. Moreover, NRC benefits by not having to develop a facility of its own to conduct such tests. ,
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