International Topical Meeting on Nuclear Research Applications and Utilization of Accelerators

4-8 May 2009, Vienna

SM/ADS-03

 XT-ADS & EFIT : Two Machines Not so Different for the Same Goal

L. Mansani

Ansaldo Nucleare S.p.A., Genova, Italy

Corresponding Author: luigi.mansani@ann.ansaldo.it

Within the EURATOM Sixth Framework Program, the EUROTRANS integrated project, funded
by the European Community, is expected to provide a significant contribution to the demonstrationof the industrial transmutation through the Accelerator Driven System route. The domain DESIGN, of the EUROTRANS integrated project, has the task to provide the pre-design of an European Transmutation Demonstrator (ETD) able to demonstrate the feasibility aspect of the nuclear waste transmutation/burning in ADS at industrial scale. This occurs in a two-phase approach running in parallel:

  • a conceptual design of the industrial scale Pb-cooled system, called European Facility for Industrial Transmutation (EFIT) and
  • a detailed design of an experimental ADS, called eXperimental demonstration of the technical feasibility of Transmutation in an Accelerator Driven System (XT–ADS), the construction of which can be started within the next eight years.

The XT–ADS should be as much as possible serving as a technological test bench of the main components of EFIT (Pb). Nevertheless divergence in the choices of components or parameters of the two machines to be designed is allowed. This divergence is even necessary as the time scales of realisation of the two facilities are different.

In the present paper the general configuration and the main characteristics of the two systems are presented. Taking into account the respective objectives, the paper highlights the characteristics that are common to both machines, despite their sometimes diverging objectives, and presents the divergent characteristics and justifies the rationale behind the choices.