Swiss federal authorities

Research

In order to carry out its regulatory activities in a professional manner, ENSI must keep abreast of the latest developments in science and technology. To this end, ENSI awards and coordinates research contracts within the framework of its ”Regulatory Security Research” programme.

Projects in the ENSI Research Programme help to clarify outstanding issues, establish fundamentals and develop the tools that ENSI requires to discharge its responsibilities. Moreover, they also foster the skills needed for regulatory activities and help develop independent expertise. Finally, international projects deliver results that Switzerland could not achieve on its own and at the same time encourage international networking.

These are the main objectives of ENSI’s research strategy. Building on this, the following range of topics are the focus of research activities:

  1. Long-term operation of nuclear power plants, especially matters relating to material ageing,
  2. Effects of earthquakes on buildings, systems and components of nuclear installations,
  3. Waste management issues relating to the construction of deep geological repositories, including the encapsulation plant and long-term dry storage of spent fuel elements,
  4. Radiation exposure of humans and the environment.

In addition, the ENSI research programme includes the following topics:

Fuels

The area of fuels relates to the reactor core. Here research is particularly concerned with high burn-up rates and the behaviour under accident conditions of both current and newly-developed fuels.

Internal events and damage

Projects conducted under the auspices of the Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) encourage the international exchange of experience on damage to components and accidents in nuclear power plants. Subject-specific databases are being created for this purpose and used to facilitate the systematic analysis of operating experience from many countries.

External events

Earthquakes and aircraft crashes are the most important external events.

Human factors

On the one hand, human factors traditionally relate to the influence of operator actions on accidents in nuclear power plants and their modelling in probabilistic safety analyses. On the other hand, organisational and ethical issues are now also being examined.

System behaviour and accident sequences

System behaviour and accident sequences in nuclear power plants are analysed from normal operation through to core meltdown accidents. This entails creating computer models and validating them by carrying out experiments. Such models are also used as a basis for the quantitative identification of plant risk in probabilistic safety analyses.

The results of the research supported by ENSI can be found in the annual research and experience reports.

Do you have a proposal for a research project supported by ENSI? Then please use the contact form for research projects.

Further Information

Background Articles

  • Background articles, Posts

    Radiation Biology (5/5): Current research in radiation biology

    Although many insights have been gained through radiation biology research, many ambiguities still remain. Nevertheless, ENSI, in cooperation with other international organisations, is working towards closing these knowledge gaps.

  • Background articles, Posts

    Research means: taking a close look

    «Our current research projects, around 35 in number, deal with safety issues with a fascinating range of topics. They specifically support the independent oversight of ENSI. I see research as a catalyst. We want to answer open questions, including unpleasant ones. To do this we need to be alert for initiatives from all sides.»

  • Felslabor Mont Terri
    Background articles

    Guided Tours of the Mont Terri Rock Laboratory

    The International Mont Terri Rock Laboratory is situated near the small town of St-Ursanne in the canton of Jura. At the Rock Laboratory, a total of 22 partners from Switzerland, Belgium, Germany, France, Japan, Canada, Spain and the US carry out research into the properties of Opalinus clay, which is a potential host rock for…

  • Background articles

    HRA

    HRA, Human Reliability Analysis: the HRA project examines the reliability of human actions, taking account of various boundary conditions. The state of the art is the determination of failure probabilities for actions that are required during an incident, but are not performed. On the other hand, there is no efficient method for the systematic identification…

  • Background articles

    People, Organisation and Safety Culture

    People, organisation and safety culture have a major influence on the safety of a nuclear plant. The research projects supported by ENSI in this area deal with the influence of human actions in incident situations, as well as requirements profiles for staff at nuclear power plants.

  • Background articles

    Mont Terri Rock Laboratory

    The objective of the international Mont Terri Rock Laboratory Research Project is to study the geological, hydrogeological, geochemical and geomechanical properties of Opalinus clay. These properties are critically important for the assessment of the safety and technical feasibility of a deep geological repository for radioactive waste in this type of rock.

  • Background articles

    OECD MCCI

    OECD MCCI, Melt Coolability and Concrete Interaction: the OECD MCCI (Melt Coolability and Concrete Interaction) project concerns severe accidents in which the reactor core melts due to the absence of cooling, after which the reactor pressure vessel (RPV) also fails. In the reactor building, the corium reaches the concrete foundation, which should be prevented from…

  • Im August 1955 nahmen Forscher auf dem Gelände des Eidgenössischen Instituts für Reaktorforschung (EIR) in Würenlingen (AG) den „Diorit“-Reaktor in Betrieb.
    Background articles

    OECD CABRI Waterloop Project

    OECD CABRI Waterloop Project: experiments on the high burn-up behaviour of fuel rods in case of rapid reactivity incidents were carried out on the CABRI research reactor in Cadarache, France. These incidents occur when the reactor briefly becomes over-critical due to the rapid, uncontrolled movement of a control element or control rod.