The main R&D areas to be covered before large amounts of funding and effort are to be spent are:
- The spallation source design and in particular the choice of the windowless design by the MYRRHA team.
- The accelerator for the generation of the high-current, high-power proton beam operating in CW mode with a high reliability that is beyond the current state-of-the-art but is conceivably in reach of present technology. This subject is at present covered by collaboration with IBA and CNRS and other partners (INFN, IAP_FU, CEA) through the FP5 and FP6.
- The liquid lead-bismuth eutectic (LBE) technology that need R&D efforts to ensure the proper mitigation of the negative aspects of this HLM:
-
210Po production
- Opacity: thus visibility through ultrasonic cameras
- Corrosion & erosion and their mitigation
- LBE filtering and monitoring
- Structural material embrittlement due to irradiation, LME and gas accumulation
- The driver MOX fuel qualification under LBE and irradiation up to high targeted burn up (100 MWd/t) and high dpa (100) and also under representative transient conditions
- Instrumentation development:
- for O2 measurement at low temperature (< 200 °C)
- for HLM free surface monitoring
- for sub-criticality monitoring
- for ultrasonic visualisation
- Robotics : development of a robot arm to be deployed under LBE for testing and qualification