2024-02-29 08:00:34
Currently there is a global race for innovation, to implement prototypes, then industrial products based on nuclear technologies, capable of providing energy in different forms – electricity, heat, steam … – to industrialists. To this end, the reactors under development are small in size compared to the reactors currently operating in France and around the world.
This reduced size allows the reactors to provide power adapted to the needs of an industrial site. But it also makes it possible to develop industrializable tools, and thus produce them in series. It is to support French projects that via the France 2030 investment plan, an “Innovative nuclear reactors” component has been set up, with several projects already supported.
The first of these is the European NUWARD reactor project, a small modular reactor whose first production head is planned for 2030.
Other projects are now being pushed forward.
Supported by the start-up NAAREA, the XAMR is a fourth generation micro-generator, which produces heat and electricity from used nuclear fuel. Technologically, it is a fast neutron reactor, using molten salts as heat transfer fluid.
The Newcleo company is also working on the development of a fast neutron reactor, this time using lead as a heat transfer fluid, with the aim of commissioning a 30 MWe LFR demonstrator from 2030.
HEXANA is one of these start-ups winning the “Innovative Nuclear Reactors” APP. The company is developing a sodium-cooled fast neutron reactor system, with two modular reactors of 400 MW thermal each. The assembly is associated with an energy storage device, making it possible to provide heat at 500°C and produce electricity.
Finally, Blue Capsule is also working on the development of a 150MWth sodium-cooled nuclear reactor, using TRISO fuel.
All these projects, we see, rely on the miniaturization of reactors, and already proven and mature technologies, to be able to industrially develop these prototypes, within a period of time – horizon 2030 – which allows these innovations to play a role. leading role in the objectives of decarbonization of human activities.
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