METIS will seek to develop common guidelines for seismic safety assessment at the European level in line with international practice and consensus
EDF Group leads on METIS project. (Credit: EDF Group)
The methods and tools innovations for seismic risk assessment (METIS) Horizon 2020 project has been officially launched after a recent virtual kick off meeting. It aims to improve confidence in nuclear safety by advancing the approach utilised for seismic safety assessments for nuclear power plants.
METIS will seek to develop common guidelines for seismic safety assessment at the European level in line with international practice and consensus. This project is also dedicated to the development, improvement and use of modern high-performance open source tools: OpenQuake engine, code_aster and salome_meca platform, OpenSees, and SCRAM.
Running from September 2020 until 2024, the total budget is €5 million, of which €4 million is funded from the European Commission. The project will be delivered by an international consortium consisting of 13 European partners from France, Germany, Italy, Greece, UK, Ukraine and Slovenia alongside with 3 organisations from US and Japan.
The depth and strength of the consortium partners brings together energy nuclear industry knowledge, expertise in seismic risk assessment and dissemination methods.
METIS Objectives:
- Translate recent scientific advances in earthquake engineering and data science for industrial needs to develop best practices for quantification, propagation and reduction of uncertainties.
- Testing model performance by comparison to data and model updating.
- Develop, improve and disseminate open source tools for seismic hazard, fragility and risk assessment.
- Improving the state of the art in seismic risk and beyond design assessments to disseminate best practice to engineering.
The outcome will allow for risk-informed decision-making in the European context and METIS will help to optimise the use of existing and future reactors and will contribute to competitiveness of the European nuclear industry.
Irmela Zentner, R&D Expert at EDF and lead of the project: “We are really excited to start this project, where we aim to improve confidence in nuclear power plants and their competitiveness using advanced seismic safety assessments. In these challenging times, we had a successful collaboration with all the partners to build up METIS and get it funded by H2020 Programme. Our recent kick-off meeting, while held remotely, was a really successful event with high engagement from all partners promising a rich and effective collaboration going forward.”
Source: Company Press Release