In July 2018, the First EU Center of Nuclear Fuel and the National Research Center "Kurchatov Institute" signed the Framework Agreement for the implementation of joint scientific and technical projects in the field of nuclear energy regarding the creation of a closed thorium fuel cycle.
An initiative on establishment of the International Consortium interested in international development and implementation of innovative thorium nuclear fuel cycle technologies has been raised by the Institute of Innovative Technologies of the Scientific and Research Centre “Kurchatov Institute”, Russian Federation, with personal support of Academician Evgeny Velikhov.
The thorium nuclear fuel cycle is based on the new generation of the nuclear fuel containing thorium pellets instead of uranium ones. Utilisation of thorium in the process of nuclear decay in a reactor core gives at least two advantages:
At the same time, it could address main open issues of the nuclear industry being nowadays on the table:
However, an issue of manufacturing the thorium pellets saturated with neutrons is a technical challenge which could be resolved only by application of the nuclear fusion technologies. Moreover, industrial use of the nuclear fusion technologies for the energy generation purposes is being explored during last 50 years with no practical solution so far.
Notwithstanding, there is a number of international developments and nuclear fusion facilities, resulted from these studies which could be used as an experimental basis for enrichment of the thorium by neutrons. For instance, JET (Culham Centre for Fusion Energy, UK) being in operation, or ITER (Cadarache facility, France) being constructed, could be considered as sites for such experimental studies.
Manufacturing capacities of the thorium nuclear fuel are planned to be based at the nuclear fuel fabrication plant construction of which is being negotiated with the Hungarian Government by First EU Center of Nuclear Fuel.
European Clean Hydrogen Alliance
In August 2020 the First EU Center of Nuclear Fuel had jointed the European Clean Hydrogen Alliance.
The European Clean Hydrogen Alliance aims at an ambitious deployment of hydrogen technologies by 2030, bringing together renewable and low-carbon hydrogen production, demand in industry, mobility and other sectors, and hydrogen transmission and distribution. With the alliance, the EU wants to build its global leadership in this domain, to support the EU’s commitment to reach carbon neutrality by 2050.
The European Clean Hydrogen Alliance was announced as part of the new industrial strategy for Europe in March 2020. It is part of efforts to accelerate the decarbonisation of industry and maintain industrial leadership in Europe. Hydrogen was also among the key strategic value chains identified by the Strategic Forum for Important Projects of Common European Interest. See their final report below.
The European Clean Hydrogen Alliance brings together industry, national and local public authorities, civil society and other stakeholders. It is strongly anchored in the hydrogen value chain, covering renewable and low-carbon hydrogen from production via transmission to mobility, industry, energy, and heating applications.
The alliance will establish an investment agenda and support the scaling up of the hydrogen value chain across Europe. The alliance will play a crucial role in facilitating and implementing the actions of the new European hydrogen strategy and in particular its investment agenda. An industry blueprint estimates investments of €430 billion until 2030. It will also be important in the context of the new energy system integration strategy.
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