LEad fast reactor Safety design and TOols

Research Project, 2024 – 2028

Shortening the time-to market of the LFR technology is an ambitious, but undeniably important factor to attract additional investments, thanks to the lower initial risk, added flexibility, and faster return of experience. Industries and utilities sharing the vision of a competitive LFR of a small and medium-size with modular features will be attracted by the compressed deployment roadmap, and will play a leverage role at national and European level, strengthening synergies and creating public–private–partnership opportunities. In this context, the European community working on the LFR development and deployment assumed the commitment, among others, to highlight the technical open issues and existing research infrastructures, aiming to support the R&D phase through European, national and in-kind contribution of the involved partners. The aim of the LESTO project is moving on along the depicted roadmap, aiming at further developing the LFR technology, supporting the demonstration that LFRs can be designed, sited, constructed, commissioned and operated in line with the requirements of the actual safety standards, with particular focus on their safety features and passive safety systems. Along the project the most relevant facilities in Europe and UK will be adopted to implement a large and very comprehensive experimental database for code validation, safety assessment and component/system demonstration. Among the others, it is worth to mention the large-scale pool type ATHENA facility, being commissioned in Romania, the CIRCE pool in Italy, as well as MELECOR in UK. These facilities, with the support of research infrastructure in Belgium, Germany and Sweden represent the state of art for the LFR R&D. Large emphasis will be devoted to transient analysis in large pools, allowing the community to cross the death valley from laboratory to industry scale.