Nuclear systems for the future
- Research on nuclear wastes
- Nuclear systems for the future
- New energy technologies
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Our strategy
Faced with the prospect of a global increase in energy consumption, dwindling supplies of fossil fuels and global warming, nuclear energy has several strong points in its favor. The CEA has therefore become actively involved in a global initiative to produce an innovative new generation of reactors, known as the «fourth generation », which involve a considerable technological advance over existing systems.
With competitive pricing and nuclear safety remaining a priority, the improvements being developed are consistent with the objectives of the third generation reactors : reducing investment costs, operating costs and fuel cycle costs, better management of accidents, and being able to withstand the risk of proliferation and protect against the risk of physical attack.
However there are now two further objectives which will mean a fundamental change in design compared with existing reactors: firstly, the efficient use of natural uranium and reducing the production of long-life radioactive waste to a bare minimum, which implies the use of fast neutron technology and the closed fuel cycle; and then to expand the uses of nuclear energy, which means developing reactors designed for purposes other than the generation of electricity, that is to say designs capable, for example, of producing hydrogen or synthetic hydrocarbons for transport.
The CEA's strategy with regard to 4th generation systems takes two forms :
Priority to be given to research into systems with fast neutrons and a closed fuel cycle (with sodium or gas coolant), The development, in close collaboration with industrial partners, of a very high temperature 600 MWth reactor to meet the needs of the electricity market around 2025, and the hydrogen market in the longer term.
Our partners
The Generation IV International Forum, launched by the Secretary of Energy in 2000, has been established as a forum to consider and select fourth generation nuclear systems. At the moment it has 11 participating countries, including France, represented by the CEA, which is currently undertaking a closer analysis of three of the six systems selected by the forum at the end of 2002. This cooperative effort, which is aimed at pushing back the limits of feasibility and testing the performance of the systems selected, was formally launched on 28 February 2005 in Washington by the signing of an inter-governmental framework agreement, by five member countries of the Forum as a first step.
Figures & research resources
Research is being conducted over several installations, including :
- The fuel production line at the GAÏA laboratory at Cadarache
- Three technological test benches for high temperature helium circuits at Cadarache (tribology, leakage sealing, thermal insulation)
- A 1 MW helium technological test loop to be completed between now and the end of 2007 at Cadarache
- A laboratory devoted to analytical studies for the development of processes for production of hydrogen by thermo-chemical cycles.
CEA divisions
This research is primarily being conducted by the teams of the Nuclear Energy Division, located at Saclay, Cadarache and Marcoule. It also involves considerable input from the Technological Research Division on materials and the production of hydrogen by high temperature electrolysis. A more specific scientific contribution, in particular on plastic, monolithic or composite ceramics, is being provided by the Materials Science Division and the CNRS (French National Center for Scientific Research).>/p>