A Technical Safety Organization (TSO) Unit

The mission statements are derived from the role of the STARS program towards its main stakeholders, namely the national nuclear energy partners (regulator, utilities, waste management), the PSI/NES/LRS organization AND the public and environment. Concretely, this role can be summarized as that of a Technical Safety Organization (TSO) unit with three main objectives.

The objective of STARS is to conduct Research aimed at developing, validating and advancing state-of-the-art computational methodologies combining best-estimate reactor simulation codes with uncertainty quantifications and incorporate the methodologies into a consistent Code System for integral multi-physics multi-scale LWR safety analyses. A specific requirement of STARS is to integrate as part of the research and support activities, the continuous maintenance, further development and qualification of detailed and up-to-date plant-specific system/core/fuel models for each of the Swiss operating reactors.

On the basis of its research, the complementary objective of STARS is to provide Scientific Support for national (as well as international) partners, including primarily the national regulator ENSI for safety/licensing related issues but also the Swiss nuclear industry for long-term operation and/or optimization of plant, system and waste management facilities.

Within the framework of its research and support activities, a third objective of STARS is to maintain and further strengthen competence and expertise in nuclear safety and to be a a main contributor to Education and Teaching education programs (including the supervision of challenging master, PhD and Post-Doc projects) for the training of the next-generation nuclear engineers and scientists.