The CIRANO experimental programme in support of advanced fast reactor physics

The French Fast Reactor Programme is effectively implementing the burning of Plutonium and Higher Actinides in order to maximize energy production by utilizing the large quantities of energy stored in reprocessed plutonium and to alleviate the environmental impact of the nuclear industry by reducing potentially toxic material stockpiles. A key element in demonstrating this capability is the planned transformation of the PHENIX and SUPERPHENIX reactors into net Pu burners: this will be achieved by first removing Pu producing blankets from the cores, and then moving to higher enrichment heterogeneous subassemblies. This paper will discuss some physics aspects of these modifications; it is shown that the current set of codes and data are not fully validated for these new configurations. A new generation of data and codes will be used for addressing these problems and additional experimental information is required to validate them: it is being provided by the CIRANO programme which is described and for which preliminary results are indicated. (author)