SPES-3: THE INTEGRAL FACILITY FOR SAFETY EXPERIMENTS ON SMALL AND MEDIUM SIZED REACTORS

From the technological viewpoint the advanced/innovative small and medium sized reactors are not different from large reactors. They differ for the higher degree of innovation implemented in their designs to achieve competitiveness and reliable performances as well as to enhance safety by incorporating passive and inherent safety features. To address the potential concerns related to the use of intrinsic and passive safety features and in particular to the primary-to-containment coupling during a LOCA, large experimental facilities are needed for demonstrating the performance and intervention sequence of safety systems during postulated design accidents and for providing data for code validation. To this end an integral test facility, called SPES-3, was designed and is under construction at SIET laboratories in Piacenza (Italy). The SPES-3 facility reproduces all parts and components of the IRIS plant with 1:100 volume scaling factor, 1:1 elevation scaling factor, prototypical fluid and thermal-hydraulic conditions. This paper describes the SPES-3 facility, its features and performance, besides the status of its realization. It also highlights its capability in simulating phenomena occurring in any kind of integral small modular reactor under development in the world.