The reliability and safety of nuclear equipment iscritical for the development of nuclear industry. The outline of the 13th five-year plan of China and that of Hunan Province clearly put forward the guiding ideology and policy of "safe development of nuclear power". To cope with the significant demand of reliability and safety of nuclear equipment, in July 2018, the "Hunan Provincial key Laboratory of Reliability Technology for Nuclear Equipment" was officially approved to be established by the Hunan Provincial Science and Technology Department.

Currently, three main research directions are carried out in the laboratory. (1) Reliability design and simulation of nuclear equipment, which will provide solid foundations for the full life-cycle design of nuclear equipment across the phases of design, manufacturing, transportation, operation and decommission; (2) Processing ability assessment of nuclear material and development of nuclear equipment, which will help discover the failure mechanism of the new generation nuclear power equipment materials and realize the independent research and development of some key components of nuclear equipment; (3) Reliability testing and evaluation of nuclear equipment, which will ensure the fault diagnosis and healthy operation of nuclear equipment under special working conditions such as strong magnetic field, strong radiation, high temperature and high pressure. Since its establishment, the laboratory has undertaken 2 National key Research and Development projects, 6 National Natural Science Foundation projects, 11 in-depth cooperation projects with the China Institute of Engineering Physics, Zhengzhou Branch of China Nuclear Power Engineering Corporation, and so on.

For many years, the laboratory research team has been naturally formed through the correlated scientific and engineering research in the field of nuclear equipment reliability. The main members are closely connected and mutually complemented, and have a long-term stable cooperative relationship. 28 regular members are contained in the team, which include 16 professors or research fellows, 9 associate professors, 3 assistant professors. Among them, 2 won the National Funds for Distinguished Young Scholars, 1 won the Recruitment Program of Global Experts, 1 won the National Special Support Programfor High-level Personnel Recruitment, 1 won the National Funds for Outstanding Young Scholars, 1 won the Young Scholars of the Yangtze River, and 3 won the Hunan Provincial Funds for Distinguished Young Scholars. The research team is assumed to be of young composition, strong innovation, reasonable knowledge structure and great development potential.