EUROPAIRS: The European project on coupling of High Temperature Reactors with industrial processes

Nuclear cogeneration with high temperature reactors

Clean energy production is a challenge, which was so far addressed mainly in the electric power sector. More energy is needed in the form of heat for both district heating and industry. Nuclear power is the only technology fulfilling all 3 sustainability dimensions, namely economy, security of supply and environment. In this context, the European Nuclear Cogeneration Industrial Initiative (NC2I) has launched the projects NC2I-R and GEMINI+ aiming to prepare the deployment of High Temperature Gas-cooled Reactors (HTGR) for this purpose.

On the Sustainability and Progress of Energy Neutral Mineral Processing

A number of primary ores such as phosphate rock, gold-, copper- and rare earth ores contain considerable amounts of accompanying uranium and other critical materials. Energy neutral mineral processing is the extraction of unconventional uranium during primary ore processing to use it, after enrichment and fuel production, to generate greenhouse gas lean energy in a nuclear reactor. Energy neutrality is reached if the energy produced from the extracted uranium is equal to or larger than the energy required for primary ore processing, uranium extraction, -conversion, -enrichment and -fuel production. This work discusses the sustainability of energy neutral mineral processing and provides an overview of the current progress of a multinational research project on that topic conducted under the umbrella of the International Atomic Energy Agency.