REPORT FROM THE COMMISSION TO THE COUNCIL AND THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT Operation of the High Flux Reactor in year 2009
Date: 2011-07-18
Institutions: European Commission
Subjects: EU research policy, Joint Research Centre, exploitation of resources, nuclear reactor

EUROPEAN COMMISSION 

Brussels, 18.7.2011 
COM(2011) 444 final 

REPORT FROM THE COMMISSION TO THE COUNCIL AND THE EUROPEAN 
PARLIAMENT 

Operation of the High Flux Reactor in year 2009 

{SEC(2011) 929 final} 

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REPORT FROM THE COMMISSION TO THE COUNCIL AND THE EUROPEAN 
PARLIAMENT 

Operation of the High Flux Reactor in year 2009 

The  Council  adopted  on  25  May  2009  a  three-year  (2009-2011)  supplementary  research 
programme to be implemented by the Joint Research Centre (JRC) concerning the operation 
of  the  High  Flux  Reactor  (HFR)  located  at  the  JRC’s  Institute  for  Energy,  Petten,  The 
Netherlands.  Article  4  of  this  Council  decision  provides  that  the  Commission  will  inform 
yearly the European Parliament and the Council by producing a report on the implementation 
of the supplementary research programme. This 2009 HFR activity report is the first of three 
yearly reports that will cover the whole supplementary research programme. 

The main objectives of the programme are the following: 

(1) 

(2) 

To  ensure  the  safe  and  reliable  operation  of  the  HFR  in  order  to  guarantee  the 
availability of the neutron flux for experimental purposes.  

To allow an efficient use of HFR by research institutes in a broad range of disciplines: 
improvement of safety of existing nuclear reactors, health including the development 
of  medical  isotopes  to  answer  questions  of  medical  research,  nuclear  fusion, 
fundamental research and training and waste management including the possibility to 
study the safety behavior of nuclear fuels for the new generation of reactor systems. 

The HFR acts also as a training facility for doctoral and post-doctoral fellows, allowing them 
to perform research activities through national or European Programmes. 

The safe operation and research objectives were fulfilled as follows in 2009: 

1. Safe Operation of the HFR 

The HFR reactor is operated by NRG (Nuclear Research and consultancy  Group).  It  has an 
operating licence granted by the Dutch national regulator KFD (Kernfysische Dienst). As for 
nuclear power plants, the HFR is subject to legally required 10-year periodic reviews which 
are performed by NRG. The HFR has been also the subject of an independent IAEA INSARR 
(Integrated Safety Assessment for Research Reactors) review in March 2005, and the next is 
foreseen in 2011. 

In  2009  the  HFR  was  safely  restarted  and  was  operational  for  248  days  and  two  periods  of 
respectively  42.6  and  31.3  days  were  used  for  preventive,  corrective  and  breakdown 
maintenance  of  all  systems,  structures  and  components  of  the  HFR  executed  with  the 
objective to enable the safe and reliable operation of the HFR. 

No incident on the International Nuclear Event Scale (INES) occurred. 

During 2009 two shipments of spent fuel, for a total of 66 elements, took place from the HFR 
to the Dutch Central Organization for Radioactive Waste. 

2. Research and Isotope production 

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2.1 Research 

The  JRC  kept  on  managing  NeT,  the  European  Network  on  Neutron  Techniques 
Standardization for Structural Integrity. The main experimental activities in NeT were relative 
to analysis of specific welds in a stainless steel plates and beams.  

The following ongoing scientific activities were performed: 

•  residual stress measurements by neutron diffraction 

•  Fuel irradiations experiments mainly within the Euratom Framework Programmes 

•  Investigation of fuel and reactor structural material irradiation (graphite and steel) 

•  Fusion  reactor  technology  experiments  concerning  the  post  irradiation  examination  of 

steels, of welds and of beryllium degradation 

2.2 Isotope Production 

In  mid-May  2009,  the  Canadian  NRU  Reactor  (a  medical  isotope  producer)  went  out  of 
operation  and  remained  unavailable  for  the  rest  of  2009,  triggering  a  continuous  worldwide 
medical  isotope  shortage.  A  disruption  in  the  HFR  would  have  caused  similar  global 
consequences.  The  HFR  therefore  increased  its  production  to  180%  of  its  nominal  level  to 
deliver  60%  of  the  total  world  demand  in  Mo-99.  The  reconfiguration  of  the  production 
facilities and operating priorities allowed as many as 11 Mo-99 production irradiations to be 
performed in parallel. 

The  HFR  produced  enough  material  to  allow  more  than  50,000  patient  scans  per  day  to  be 
performed worldwide. This amount corresponds to more than half of the 10 million medical 
diagnoses executed each year in Europe. 

3. Financial contributions for the execution of the programme. 

The  Commission  received  in  2009  from  the  supplementary  programme  800,000  €  as 
provisions for the Decommissioning fund. Other expenditures (direct personnel, support HFR, 
utilities,  spent  fuel  management)  incurred  by  JRC  were  also  paid  from  the  supplementary 
programme budget. 

An accompanying Staff Working Paper presents in more detail these results of the operation 
of the HFR in 2009. 

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