The collaborative MAX project ensues from the recommendations of the European Union’s Strategic Energy Technology Plan for the development and deployment of sustainable nuclear fission technologies in Europe. MAX will participate in addressing the issue of high‐level long‐lived radioactive waste transmutation by pursuing the development of the high‐power proton accelerator as specified by the MYRRHA Accelerator‐Driven System (ADS) demonstrator project in Belgium.

The main goal of the MAX project is to deliver an updated consolidated reference layout of the MYRRHA LINAC with sufficient detail and adequate level of confidence in order to initiate in 2015 its engineering design and subsequent construction phase.

To reach this goal, advanced beam simulation activities will be undertaken and a detailed design of the major accelerating components will be carried out, building on several prototyping activities.

A strong focus will be put on all the aspects that pertain to the reliability and availability of this accelerator, since the number of beam interruptions longer than three seconds has to be minimized. Such frequently‐repeated beam interruptions could indeed induce high thermal stresses and fatigue on the reactor structures, the target or the fuel elements, with possible significant damages especially to the fuel claddings.

In this context, the MAX team expects to develop an accurate reliability model of the MYRRHA accelerator by using the methodology applied for nuclear power plants. On the other hand it is foreseen to experimentally prove the feasibility of the innovative “fault‐tolerance” redundancy scheme, by making extensive use of the prototypic accelerating module developed during the previous FP6 EUROTRANS programme.

MAX is divided into five work packages :

The main objective of TIARA is the integration of national and international accelerator R&D infrastructures into a single distributed European accelerator R&D facility with the goal of developing and strengthening state-of-the-art research, competitiveness and innovation in a sustainable way in the field of accelerator Science and Technologies in Europe.

Besides maximizing the benefits for the owners of the infrastructures and their users, TIARA aims at establishing a framework for developing and supporting strong joint European programmes :

> for accelerator Research and Development
> for education and training
> for enhancing innovation in collaboration with industry.

An innovative molten salt reactor concept, the MSFR (Molten Salt Fast Reactor) is developed by CNRS (France) since 2004. Based on the particularity of using a liquid fuel, this concept is derived from the American molten salt reactors (included the demonstrator MSRE) developed in the 1960s. The major drawbacks of these designs were (1) a short lifetime of the graphite blocks, (2) a reactor fuelled with 233U, not a natural fissile isotope, (3) a salt constituted of a high chemical toxic element : BeF2, and (4) a fuel reprocessing flux of 4000 liters per day required reaching a high breeding gain. However, this concept is retained by the Generation IV initiative, taking advantages of using a liquid fuel which allows more manageable on-line core control and reprocessing, fuel cycle flexibility (U or Th) and minimization of radiotoxic nuclear wastes. In MSFR, MSR concept has been revisited by removing graphite and BeF2. The neutron spectrum is fast and the reprocessing rate strongly reduced down to 40 litters per day to get a positive breeding gain. The reactor is started with 233U or with a Pu and minor actinides (MA) mixture from PWR spent fuel. The MA consumption with burn-up demonstrates the burner capability of MSFR.

The objective of this project is to propose a design of MSFR in 2012 given the best system configuration issued from physical, chemical and material studies, for the reactor core, the reprocessing unit and the wastes conditioning. By this way, demonstration that MSFR can satisfy the goals of Gen IV, in terms of sustainability (Th breeder), non proliferation (integrated fuel cycle, multi-recycling of actinides), resources (close U/Th fuel cycle, no uranium enrichment), safety (no reactivity reserve, strongly negative feedback coefficient) and waste management (actinide burner) will be done.

The ERINDA project aims for a coordination of European efforts to exploit up-to-date neutron beam technology for novel research on advanced concepts for nuclear fission reactors and the transmutation of radioactive waste. Such waste is already existing in appreciable quantity due to the year-long operation of existing nuclear reactors and it will eventually also be generated during the running of new reactor types – albeit they can be optimized to produce much less of it.
Research to the aim of finding techniques optimized for a strong reduction of nuclear waste can already now be performed at existing nuclear facilities from the consortium proposed in this proposal and the main objective is to provide adequate transnational access to these infrastructures.

ENSAR (project number : 262010) is the integrating activity for European nuclear scientists who are performing research in three of these major subfields : Nuclear Structure, Nuclear Astrophysics and Applications of Nuclear Science.

Its core aim is to provide access to seven of the complementary world-class large-scale facilities : GSI (D), GANIL (F), joint LNL-LNS (I), JYFL (FI), KVI (NL), CERN-ISOLDE (CH) and ALTO (F). These facilities provide stable and radioactive ion beams of excellent qualities ranging in energies from tens of keV/u to a few GeV/u.

ENSAR is funded by the European Commission within its Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) under the specific programme ’Capacities’.