CEA program on future generation light water modular reactors and gas cooled reactors

The CEA programme on 'Future Generation Reactors and Fuel Cycles' aims at studying and developing the mean and long term most promising options for nuclear reactors, fuels and reprocessing. These options should contribute to make the nuclear energy a major source of the sustainable development. The program also aims at maintaining at the highest level of competency the technologies with which the CEA will be able to bring to national achievements or international projects in the next decades, projects whose specifications and calendar are today unknown. These studies on the 'Future Generation Reactors and Fuel Cycles' constitute a field privileged for international collaboration. The corresponding researches are structured in four main axes: Innovations for LWR; Systems of 4th generation; Sodium-cooled reactors; Systems which are the object for survey or exploratory studies. Studies on future nuclear gas technologies are mainly covered by the 4th generation programme (Gen IV). Within this context, the goals pursued, in particular the minimization of the production of long lived waste and the saving of resources (i.e.: the optimised utilisation of fissile and fertile nuclear fuels), could justify an evolution towards hard neutron spectra and high temperatures, to cover applications other than the electricity production, e.g.: hydrogen production, desalination, cogeneration. The main R and D axis for these long-term objectives currently the area of Gas Cooled Reactors (GCR). The corresponding program is structured through eight R and D projects details of which are presented within the paper. (author)