In EU-CONVERSION, research reactors in Europe join forces, committing to convert their fuel elements from high to low enriched uranium. This conversion research project aims to secure supply chains by providing safe, low-enriched uranium (LEU) fuels for the conversion from highly-enriched uranium, and for long-term operation of the European research reactors.
Europe is the world’s largest supplier and user of medical radioisotopes, and high-power and medium-power research reactors play a vital role in their production. Ensuring a secure supply of medical isotopes is crucial and a long-term goal of the project.
The project, funded through the Euratom Research and Training programme, will build trust with nuclear research and support organisations, and develop advanced computational methods for nuclear safety, consolidate fuel qualification data, conduct representative tests, and establish efficient supply chains for advanced research reactor fuels. Additionally, an international master's programme with leading European and international universities aims to significantly improve training in nuclear technology topics.
The ILL is a member of the consortium, led by the Technical University of Munich (TUM) and including institutes and companies from Germany, France, Belgium and the Czech Republic.
“The ILL is a world-leading large-scale research facility of enormous importance both for radioisotope production and for fundamental and applied research in a variety of fields including physics, chemistry, materials science, biology and health, energy and environment, nuclear and particle physics, and quantum technologies,” says Yoann Calzavara, the ILL project coordinator, “Our goal is to operate Europe's most powerful research reactor with the innovative low-enriched fuel in the future - with the same scientific performance as before.”
Within EU-CONVERSION, the ILL is mainly involved in work package WP3, which aims to demonstrate sustainable fuel supply chains for the European health physics research reactors (HPRRs) and multi-purpose research reactors (MPRRs), primarily in the domain of monolithic uranium–molybdenum and high-loaded uranium silicide fuel. The fuel selected for the conversion of the ILL’s reactor is a high-loaded uranium silicide fuel at 4.8 gU/cm3 with a thick fuel core and a thinner cladding. This task aims to demonstrate the production feasibility and the yield on a larger scale, with a geometry suitable for irradiation in the ILL’s reactor. The material needed for this task is 35 kg of LEU metal to be supplied by the ILL, who will be owner of the raw materials, plates and manufacturing scraps.
The ILL is also involved in work package WP4, whose general objective is the irradiation of two test assemblies, one with a monolithic uranium–molybdenum fuel element and the other with high-loaded uranium silicide fuel plates, under high-power irradiation conditions relevant for the reactor-specific fuel qualification of current and future European HPRR and MPRR.