Progress report on the Italian national program on fast reactors

Conclusions: • The ENEA objective is to support the Italian industrial system in the design, development and construction of the LFR demonstrator ALFRED and, in a longer time, of the ELFR First Of A Kind. • The HLM technology is under development in several European countries. • The viable route to ALFRED seems to be the construction in a European country able to access the EC structural funds for cohesion: Romania has already expressed this purpose. • The conceptual design is still ongoing. The numerical tools for heavy liquid metals have been implemented and tested since years. • The R&D associated with main components is ongoing. Most of the necessary facilities are operational. • The design trade-off between a "adiabatic core" and a "safe core" is achieved. • The issue of fuel cladding material remains the toughest issue to deal with. This is mainly due to the qualification effort which must be envisaged even in irradiation facilities. • Italy is looking for a foreign partner for irradiations aimed to LFR fuel development testing