MYRRHA Project Status and New Implementation Plan. A new Large Research Infrastructure in a Small Innovative Country. Challenges and Opportunities

Since 1998 SCK•CEN is developing the MYRRHA project as an accelerator driven system (ADS) based on the lead-bismuth eutectic (LBE) as a coolant of the reactor and a material for its spallation target. MYRRHA is a flexible fast-spectrum pool-type research irradiation facility, also serving since the FP5 EURATOM framework as the backbone of the Partitioning & Transmutation (P&T) strategy of the European Commission concerning the ADS development in the third pillar of this strategy. MYRRHA is proposed to the international community of nuclear energy and nuclear physics as a pan-European large research infrastructure in ESFRI to serve as a multipurpose fast spectrum irradiation facility for various fields of research. In this paper, we present the current design of MYRRHA and the updated implementation strategy, showing that challenges can be turned into opportunities.