Europe is the world’s largest supplier and among the world’s largest users of medical radioisotopes. A secure supply of these isotopes is key to support a safe, high quality and reliable use of radiological and nuclear technology in healthcare. As most medical radioisotopes are produced by the European HPRRs (high-power research reactors) and MPRRs (medium-power research reactors), these reactors play a major role for the time-critical supply chain of these radioisotopes, but also for fundamental and applied research using neutrons. The proposed project EU-CONVERSION will contribute to securing these supply chains via the supply of safe low-enriched uranium fuels for the HEU to LEU conversion and long-term operation of the European research reactors. To facilitate their deployment, the project will generate the necessary trust at the nuclear regulators and technical support organizations for the challenges of the upcoming conversions, including the use of digital technologies and advanced computational methods in nuclear safety. In a long term, the knowledge and innovations created within this project will also contribute to the European strategic goals to maintain a world-leading innovative nuclear industry, and to increase the competencies in nuclear technology. To achieve these objectives, the proposed actions within EU-CONVERSION include the consolidation of generic fuel qualification data together with two reactor-representative irradiation tests for HPRR conversions, the demonstration of sustainable and efficient European supply chains for advanced LEU research reactor fuels for HPRRs and MPRRs, as well as the establishment of modern computational methods for nuclear safety analysis and fuel performance modeling.

Securing the nuclear fuel supply for European research reactors is the overall objective of the LEU-FOREvER project. Our analysis points out two main risks of shortage: (i) the very challenging conversion of High Performance Research Reactors (HPRRs) from High to Low Enriched Uranium fuels (LEU), (ii) the ROSATOM monopoly to fuel medium power research reactors (MPRRs) with original Soviet design. On HPRRs, a multi-disciplinary consortium composed of fuel/core designers, operators and fuel manufacturer has been built to tackle both issues. Five European organisations (AREVA NP, CEA, ILL, SCK•CEN, TUM), which compose the HERACLES group, have been strongly involved for almost 20 years now in the development of LEU fuels. To enter the qualification phase in 2021, HERACLES is pushing towards the completion of an understanding phase. The baseline lies on the development of UMo fuels and their variants. Within LEU-FOREvER, optimisation of both manufacturing process (up to the design of pilot equipment) and modelling of the in-pile behaviour of these fuels are proposed. As a result of an independent review undergone in 2015, an alternative to UMo fuels has to be considered: this will be high-loaded U3Si2. Within LEU-FOREvER, it will be optimised to prepare an ambitious in-pile test (“High PROSIT”). For European MPRRs, the ultimate goal is to design a new core which could work with both the original ROSATOM and European elements that would be developed, licensed and qualified (“4EVERTEST”) within LEU-FOREvER. The Czech LVR-15 reactor (CV Rez) has been selected as a case study, and preliminary design by AREVA-TA is based on U3Si2/Al flat fuel plates. To improve economic competitiveness, AREVA NP will reinvestigate its manufacturing process and propose optimisations. Strong synergies are expected between both activities. The modernization of research reactors appears as a key element in the mitigation of the risks surrounding the supply of isotopes, as expressed in the NFRP-11 topic.

ELSMOR (towards European Lisencing of Small MOdular Reactors) aims to create methods and tools for the European stakeholders to assess and verify the safety of light water small modular reactors (LW-SMR) that would be deployed in Europe. ELSMOR advances the understanding and technological solutions pertaining to light water SMRs on several fronts: • Collection, analysis, and dissemination of the information on the potential and challenges of Small Modular Reactors to various stakeholders, including the public, decision makers and regulators. • Development of the high level methods to assess the safety of LW-SMRs • Improvement of the European experimental research infrastructure to assist in the evaluation of the novel safety features of the future LW-SMRs. • Improvement of the European nuclear safety analysis codes to demonstrate the capability to assess the safety of the future LW-SMRs Establishing education and training in the field of innovative nuclear reactors for young professionals is also emphasized. The ELSMOR project is built upon the expertise of the consortium that consists of technical support organizations, technical research centres, industrial partners, and universities with the long experience in European nuclear safety analysis and the development and implementation of innovative nuclear technologies. The industrial partners include utilities, small medium sized enterprises as well as the consortium currently developing the French LW-SMR (F-SMR design). The developers of European safety analysis tools and other computer codes use their well-established paths for exploitation of the improved and validated simulation tools. The licencing approaches and methods would be expected to be directly utilized by SMR designers like the French consortium. The outcomes should make the licensing process more fluid and comprehensive; this should also be true from the regulator point of view.