European Research on Heavy Liquid Metal Technology for Advanced Reactor Systems

The European project EUROTRANS, sponsored by the European Commission, aims to the demonstration of the technical feasibility of transmutation of high level nuclear waste using Accelerator Driven Systems (ADS). within this objective the design of an eXperimental facility (XT-ADS), and a conceptual design of a European Facility for Industrial Transmutation (EFIT) are foreseen. Both the XTADS and the EFIT are subcritical reactor systems having as coolant liquid Lead-Bismuth Eutectic (LBE) and liquid Pb, respectively. For both systems, a liquid metal (usually LBE) spallation target has been foreseen to provide the external neutron source. Within, the EUROTRANS project, in addition to design activities, substantial effort is dedicated to develop and demonstrate the required know-how and technology, especially in the fields of fuel design and development, heavy liquid metal (HLM) technology, and nuclear data assessment. In this context, the DEMETRA domain of the EUROTRANS project is dedicated to the development of liquid metal technology, characterisation of the reference structural materials and study of thermal - hydraulics behaviour of the different component of both XT-ADS and EFIT systems. In addition, the post test analysis of the MEGAPIE target is foreseen as well. MEGAPIE is an international project , where the design and fabrication of 1MW liquid LBE spallation target, to be irradiated at SINQ (PSI), has been performed. The DEMETRA RandD program has been defined on the basis of the foreseen design needs for the XT-ADS and EFIT, taking into account the existing experimental results and numerical evaluations that have been successfully obtained from the preceding European programs, both national and/or sponsored within the 5th European Commission framework program EURATOM.