Education and Training Series #19: SCK•CEN’s R&D on MYRRHA

These webinars, organised by the GIF Education and Training Working Group are streamed live monthly. The recordings and slide decks are accessible after the webinar on this website. These webinars cover a very broad range of technical and policy related topics. At the end of 2023 they have been viewed by more than 15000 people (approximately half of the views during the live streams and the other half views being of the archives on the public GIF website). In total, the GIF webinars have reached Generation IV enthusiasts, scientists, and engineers in more than 80 countries.

These webinars are organised and hosted by the GIF Education and Training Working Group (ETWG). 

SCK•CEN is actively working on designing and building a new multifunctional research installation: MYRRHA as in Multi-purpose hYbrid Research Reactor for High-tech Applications. This webinar will present the MYRRHA project, an accelerator driven system coupling a sub-critical Pb-Bi cooled reactor and a high power proton accelerator through a spallation target which is the very first prototype of a nuclear reactor driven by a particle accelerator in the world. As an external source of neutrons, this particle accelerator maintains the nuclear fission chain reaction. It is referred to as a subcritical reactor: the core does not contain enough fissile material to spontaneously maintain the chain reaction. This innovative nuclear technology is safe and easy to control. When the particle accelerator is stopped, the chain reaction also stops automatically within a fraction of a second.