Europairs: the European Project on Coupling of High Temperature Reactors with Industrial Processes

Developers of High Temperature Reactors (HTR) worldwide acknowledge that the main asset for market breakthrough is its unique ability to address growing needs for industrial cogeneration of heat and power (CHP) owing to its high operating temperature and flexibility, adapted power level, modularity and robust safety features. A strong alliance between nuclear and process heat user industries is a necessity for developing such a nuclear system for the conventional process heat market, just as the electro-nuclear development required a close partnership with utilities. Initiating such an alliance is one of the objectives of the EUROPAIRS project (www.europairs.eu) presently on-going in the frame of the Euratom 7th Framework Programme (FP7). Although small and of short duration (21 months), EUROPAIRS is of strategic importance: it generates the boundary conditions for rapid demonstration of collocating HTR with industrial processes as proposed by the European High Temperature Reactor Technology Network (HTR-TN). This paper presents the main goals, the organization and the working approach of EUROPAIRS. It also presents the status of the viability assessment studies for coupling HTR with industrial end-user systems as one of the main pillars of the project. The main goal of the viability assessment is to identify developments required to remove the last technological and licensing barriers for a viable coupling scheme. The study is expected to result in guidelines for directing the choice of an industrial scale prototype.