Third APAL Progress Meeting introduces final project year

From September 12 – 14, 2023, the APAL Consortium gathered for their third Progress Meeting at the premises of host Framatome in Erlangen, Germany.

APAL coordinator Vladislav Pištora (UJV) and Framatome Team Leader, Ralf Tiete, introduced the meeting with a warm welcome to the circa 50 participants onsite and online. On the first day, the status and general progress of APAL was introduced and discussed, focusing on open subjects and research questions that will dominate the activities of the last project year. The Consortium outlined the goals for the End-user Workshop in May 2024 and the Final Seminar, that will conclude the project in September 2024. Furthermore, strategies and activities to exploit project results were explored.

During the lunch break, meeting participants were given the opportunity to visit Framatome´s incident testing facility for Primary Circiuts, named PKL (primary loop in German), which simulates the primary cooling circuit of a pressurized water reactor.

The second and third meeting day focused on scientific discussions of the workpackages. The workpackage teams presented their progress, interdependencies between different teams and plans for the following months. Stimulated and fruitful discussions followed the presentations and helped to concretize solution for remaining research questions and the planning for the final project activities. Despite of the challenges that APAL faced during the COVID-19 pandemic, the consortium is eager and optimistic to bring the project to a successful end in September 2024.