Nuclear reactor 'most advanced in Europe'
A new reactor will help maintain skills in nuclear technologies and support research into new designs
The 500m Jules Horowitz Reactor (RJH), named after the French reactor physics research pioneer, is a 100MWt light water cooled materials test reactor.
It will be sited in southern France and operated by the French Commissariat à l'énergie atomique (CEA), which has supplied 50 per cent of the funding. The balance is coming from Electricité de France, 20 per cent; EU research institutes, 20 per cent; and Areva, 10 per cent.
Due to be commissioned in 2014, RJH is scheduled to be a versatile research tool with a lifetime of 50 years. It may be used by nuclear utilities, nuclear steam system suppliers, nuclear fuel fabricators, research organisations and safety authorities.
Its primary uses will be research into the performance of nuclear fuel at existing reactors, testing designs for fuel for future reactors and the production of radioisotopes for use in medicine.
RJH is designed to be highly versatile - the whole reactor block between coolant inlet and outlet is dismountable and changeable to allow scope for future improvements.
Reactor fuel takes the form of cylinders of six concentric curved fuel plates hot-rolled from uranium alloys enriched to up to 20 per cent U-235. 46 cylinders fit in the one-piece aluminium alloy core rack, amounting to a total mass of 21 kg U-235. The dismountable core is partly surrounded by a beryllium reflector.
The core rack provides space for two experimental devices, while ten can be simultaneously inserted in the core, in the centres of fuel cylinders. The planned research includes high temperature materials experiments carried out under high neutron flux and at temperatures of up to 1000 deg C. This work will help to qualify materials such as ceramics for use in future nuclear power reactors.
Other research includes in-core irradiation tests of materials under stress will help predict their performance; tests on fuels for the very high temperature gas-cooled Generation-IV reactors which could come into use around 2040; and the production of radioisotopes for use in nuclear medicine.
"