Development and assessment of structural materials and heavy liquid metal technologies for transmutation systems (DEMETRA): highlights on major results

The DEMETRA domain of the EUROTRANS project provides a wealth of experimental and theoretical results within key technological areas related to the Heavy Liquid Metal (HLM) Technology. HLMs as Pb and Lead-Bismuth Eutectic (LBE) are the reference coolant and spallation materials choices for the ADS facilities studied within the EUROTRANS project.
For these coolants the key items that have been addressed within DEMETRA are:
Coolant quality control in terms of oxygen and impurities control;
Materials compatibility in terms of corrosion, mechanical and irradiation resistance;
Thermal-hydraulics studies related to heat transfer in turbulent conditions through dedicated experiments on a single pin, a fuel bundle and integrated component tests;
Safety related studies through experimental and simulation studies on HLM/water interaction;
Support to component design and testing, where in particular substantial support has been given to the development of the windowless-neutron spallation target and the assessment of the window spallation target behaviour through the post test analysis of MEGAPIE;
Measurement and operational techniques development;

The technical work programme of DEMETRA is herein summarised and some major experimental results are discussed.