Work packages

The consortium of this CA has structured its work in 6 work packages (WP) as indicated below:

•      WP1: Rational and added value of P&T for waste management policies. This WP will consist of an analytical assessment of the need for P&T in the spent fuel waste management policy(ies) presently considered in the different EU member states. It will acts as a think tank where all partners are represented and will deliver input data of waste inventory, number and capacity of the corresponding projected P&T facilities at industrial scale that will be refined by the 4 following WPs.

•      WP2: Review & selection of Relevant Fuel Cycle Strategies in Europe supplemented by Regional Context for Development and Deployment. The objective of this work package is to select and to define the most promising P&T scenarios on the basis of previous studies and to put them in a European context, in order to provide to the roadmap the necessary frame in order to define the needed installations, milestones and developments. The regional at European scale approach being the most appealing from the technical point of view for accommodating various national positions towards nuclear energy as well as from the proliferation resistance and the economical feasibility point of views.

•      WP3: Fuel Cycle Facilities related to Reprocessing. The objective of this WP is to define the R&D needs and related timescales for the development of pilot scale-units reprocessing equipments and processes to separate with the highest possible efficiency long-lived isotopes from the used fuel in view of their transmutation or recycling. This WP will be covering the aqueous as well as the pyro-reprocessing facilities.

•      WP4: Fuel cycle facilities related Fuel Fabrication Demonstration. The objective of this WP is to define the content and timescale for the R&D needs related to transmutation fuels fabrication up to pilot scale-units and the demonstration of their ability to be licensed for future industrial operation.

•      WP5: Fuel cycle facilities for transmutation & associated technology (ies). The objective of this work package is to define the needed R&D and the key technological facilities, in particular irradiation facilities for the demonstration of high level waste transmutation before the final industrial transmutation facility can be considered at industrial scale, ranging from thermal to fast spectrum and from critical to sub-critical systems. Moreover, coolant technological demonstration facilities in order to support elements of choice of FR coolant and ADS target concept.

•      WP6: Integration and Evaluation of Resources. Based on the outcome of the above WP’s (3, 4 and 5) framed in the perspectives given by WP’s 1 and 2, the objective of this final WP will be to integrate and to structure the needed resources in a time span going until the industrial deployment of P&T with indication of the critical milestones.

This CA is conceived to be developed in close contact with the parallel CA SNF-TP (Sustainable Nuclear Fission Technological Platform).