This course begins with an overview description of the SAM Guidelines, including a brief history of SAMG development, the general philosophy of severe accident management, and SAMG organization.

The introductory material also includes a review of severe accident phenomena significant to the evaluation and decision-making process. The course next covers the Control Room SAMGs, beginning with a review of the Executive Volume for the Control Room.Then the course describes in detail the two Severe Accident Control Room Guidelines, SACRG-1 and SACRG-2.The course also discusses the Exit Guidelines at this time.

The next topic is the Executive Volume for the Technical Support Center, followed by descriptions of the Diagnostic Flow Chart (DFC) and the Severe Challenge Status Tree (SCST). The descriptions of the DFC and SCST emphasize the logic of the prioritization process and the significance of the variable setpoints based on the phenomenology discussed earlier.

The remainder of the course consists of detailed instruction in each Computational Aid (CA), Severe Challenge Guideline (SCG), and Severe Accident Guideline (SAG). For each of these CAs, the purpose, basis, usage, and assumptions are described. Each of the SCGs is described in terms of purpose, entry conditions, evaluations, and the decision process.

A similar approach is used for the SAGs, with the addition of descriptions of the benefits and negative impacts. Throughout the course, learning is reinforced by individual and group exercises.