MYRRHA Draft-2 Design accomplishments

One of the main SCK-CEN research facility, namely the Materials Testing Reactor (MTR) BR2, is nowadays in operation for more than 40 years. The need for a safe and economic operation of the European nuclear park for preserving the natural resources, demand the start-up of one or more new MTRs in a very near future. On the other hand the closing of the fuel cycle as well as the development of future energy systems request clearly the use of fast spectrum irradiation facilities. The MYRRHA project started at SCK-CEN in this context, the concept of a new irradiation and testing facility to replace BR2. MYRRHA, being a fast neutron facility, would be a complementary project to the thermal MTR Jules Horowitz Reactor in France. That would give Europe a full research capacity in terms of nuclear research and development for Generation III and IV reactors. At mid-2002, a first pre-design file of MYRRHA (namely the ''MYRRHA Draft - 1'' file with a core nominal power of 30 MWth) has been submitted to an International Technical Guidance Committee (ITGC) for reviewing. No show stopper has been identified in the project. Nevertheless, the ITGC members have recommended: (1) to give more attention to safety studies and iterate to the pre-design before entering the detailed engineering phase; (2) to address some RandD topics to avoid bottlenecks such as fuel pin and assembly development and qualification; (3) to make a decision on the accelerator option (cyclotron or LINAC) and possibly revisit the beam parameters that were already at that moment fixed to 350 MeV*5 mA but mainly derived from the cyclotron technology possibilities. The objective of this effort in the period 2003-2005 was to update and progress the MYRRHA Draft-1 design based on the ITGC evaluation results, the consequences of the safety studies that had to be accomplished on basis of the Draft-1 design and holding the initial objectives of the MYRRHA facility. This resulted at mid-2005 in producing the MYRRHA Draft-2 design file