All-European team leads lead-cooled EAGLES reactor project

[NNadir]

I'm rather a fan of lead coolants for nuclear reactors which have historically run on LBE (Lead bismuth eutectic). I believe pure lead is feasible, and in many ways preferable. (Lead's dominant isotope, ²⁰⁸Pb will be transmuted into bismuth during operation, so in effect, it will evolve toward LBE during operation)

I didn't know that this type reactor was under development in Europe, but apparently in this time of rising nuclear creativity, it is:

All-European team leads lead-cooled EAGLES reactor project

Some excerpts:

The nuclear regulators of Belgium, Italy, and Romania signed on this week to the first “prelicensing” project under the IAEA’s Nuclear Harmonization and Standardization Initiative (NHSI) during the opening day of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s 69th General Conference, pledging to work with the EAGLES Consortium to clarify regulatory requirements for a lead-cooled reactor ahead of formal licensing.

European lead-cooled reactor development efforts predate this announcement by more than a decade, but if you haven’t heard of EAGLES-300, the 300-MWe reactor concept under development, that’s not surprising. The consortium leading the effort was formalized just three months ago, in June, with the goal of operating a demonstration reactor in Belgium by 2035 and commercializing the technology in 2039.

Consortium partners: The four EAGLES Consortium partners are Italian nuclear engineering, procurement, and construction contractor Ansaldo Nucleare and three national research institutes: ENEA, RATEN-ICN, and SCK CEN (of Italy, Romania, and Belgium, respectively).

Back in November 2023, Westinghouse Electric Company was also on board with the project, but within a year it had withdrawn and was “focusing on its water-cooled projects,” according to SCK CEN, giving the consortium a new “European orientation...”

This type of reactor can operate at high temperatures, meaning it has many possible industrial applications beyond the mere production of electricity. It will also be a fast spectrum reactor, meaning that it will run on plutonium while converting uranium into that element at a rate faster than it is consumed, a breeder.

...What do we know about the reactor? According to the press release from Ansaldo Energia, EAGLES-300 is a lead-cooled SMR with an electrical output of about 300 MWe that can also provide heat for industrial applications, including hydrogen production. The fast reactor’s “advanced fuel strategy” would include the use of “recycled materials...”

Regrettably, the planned commercialization date is 2039, which, as is the case with many efforts to recover from antinuke fear mongering and selective attention that has left the world in flames, comes in under the rubric of "too little, too late."

Hopefully the project can be accelerated somehow. Lead is in many ways, vastly superior to sodium as a coolant/heat transfer medium.

Have a nice weekend.