Supplying the European Research Reactors with Safe Low-Enriched Uranium Fuels for Their Conversion and Long-Term Operation to Secure the Supply of Medical Radioisotopes

Europe is the world’s largest supplier and among the world’s largest users of medical radioisotopes.

A secure supply of these isotopes is key to support a safe, high quality and reliable use of radiological and nuclear technology in healthcare.

As most medical radioisotopes are produced by the European HPRRs (high-power research reactors) and MPRRs (medium-power research reactors), these reactors play a major role for the time-critical supply chain of these radioisotopes, but also for fundamental and applied research using neutrons.

The proposed project EU-CONVERSION will contribute to securing these supply chains via the supply of safe low-enriched uranium fuels for the HEU to LEU conversion and long-term operation of the European research reactors.

To facilitate their deployment, the project will generate the necessary trust at the nuclear regulators and technical support organizations for the challenges of the upcoming conversions, including the use of digital technologies and advanced computational methods in nuclear safety.

In a long term, the knowledge and innovations created within this project will also contribute to the European strategic goals to maintain a world-leading innovative nuclear industry, and to increase the competencies in nuclear technology.To achieve these objectives, the proposed actions within EU-CONVERSION include the consolidation of generic fuel qualification data together with two reactor-representative irradiation tests for HPRR conversions, the demonstration of sustainable and efficient European supply chains for advanced LEU research reactor fuels for HPRRs and MPRRs, as well as the establishment of modern computational methods for nuclear safety analysis and fuel performance modeling.