The Belgian Nuclear Research Centre (SCK-CEN) is a Foundation of Public Utility (FPU), with a legal status according to private law, under the tutorial of the Belgian Federal Minister in charge of energy. It has about 650 employees, of which one third has an academic degree. SCK-CEN's main competences are found in nuclear materials research, development of innovative nuclear systems, nuclear waste research and environmental and health research in connection with nuclear radiation.
Since 1998 SCK-CEN is collaborating with European laboratories and research centres in the development of MYRRHA. MYRRHA is a heavy liquid metal cooled nuclear system designed to operate as Accelerator Driven sub-critical System (ADS) or as a critical fast reactor. It consists of a proton accelerator proton coupled to a liquid Pb-Bi spallation target in a Pb-Bi cooled and sub-critical fast core. MYRRHA is a basis for the European experimental ADS. It will provide protons and neutrons for many R&D applications, including transmutation studies.
Relevant experience
SCK-CEN took part in the European TWG on European Roadmap for ADS transmutation and coordinated the ADOPT Thematic Network. It has participated in several FP6 projects including EUROTRANS, VELLA, ELSY and MTR-I3. Presently SCK-CEN coordinates FP7 Projects CDT, FREYA, ARCAS, SEARCH and MAXSIMA and participates in a number of other FP7 projects including MATTER, GETMAT, MAX, LEADER, THINS, SILER and SARGEN-IV.
Scientific and technical personnel involved
- Dr. Alexey Stankovskiy: Obtained his PhD. in nuclear physics in 1998 working at the Obninsk Instute of Nuclear Power Engineering, Russia. In 2002, he obtained a Doctoral degree in Nuclear Engineering at Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan. From 2008, he became a member of SCK-CEN as a research scientist. His research is focused on the neutronics design of MYRRHA, including management and support of nuclear data, and the development of the burn-up code.
- Dr. Ir. Gert Van den Eynde: Head of the Expert Group Reactor Modeling and Safety. He holds a Master degree in Engineering in Computer Science, a Master degree in nuclear engineering and a PhD. in Nuclear Engineering. He is involved in the MYRRHA project since 1999 and was task leader in the FP6 IP-EUROTRANS for the XT-ADS core design. His main fields of research are computational methods for neutron transport and reactor core modeling and analysis.