Realisation of a New Research Infrastructure in Belgium: MYRRHA, an ADS towards closing the nuclear fuel cycle via P&T

Adrian Fabich (SCK CEN, Belgium)

SCK CEN, the Belgium National Center for Nuclear Research, is at the forefront of Heavy Liquid Metal (HLM) nuclear technology worldwide with the development of the MYRRHA Accelerator Driven System (ADS).

MYRRHA is conceived as a flexible fast-spectrum research irradiation facility cooled by Lead Bismuth Eutectic (LBE), and was identified by SNETP (www.snetp.eu) as the European Technology Pilot Plant for the Lead-cooled Fast Reactor. MYRRHA is proposed to the international community of nuclear energy and nuclear physics as a pan-European large research infrastructure to serve as a multipurpose fast spectrum irradiation facility for various fields of research such as; transmutation of High Level Waste (HLW), material and fuel research for Gen.IV reactors, material for fusion energy, innovative radioisotopes development and production and for fundamental physics. As such MYRRHA is since 2010 on the high priority list of the ESFRI roadmap (http://www.esfri.eu/roadmap-2016). The nominal design power of the MYRRHA reactor is 70 MW_thermal. It is driven in sub-critical mode by a high power proton accelerator based on LINAC technology delivering a 600 MeV proton beam of 4 mA intensity in Continuous Wave (CW) mode. The choice of the LINAC technology is dictated by the unprecedented reliability level required by the ADS application.

On September 7, 2018 the Belgian federal government decided to build this large research infrastructure. In this seminar we will present  the status of the MYRRHA project as a whole and in particular stressing the role of Accelerator Driven Systems in closing efficiently the nuclear fuel cycle and burning the Minor Actinides for reducing the radiotoxicity burden in the high level storage.

This seminar will provide an introduction to the purpose of (partitioning&) transmutation, the goals of MYRRHA and the current activities in implementing the first stage of the related particle accelerator, stressing the specific characteristics and requirements needed for ADS and how are we progressing in meeting them during design and implementation.