Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats for HTR deployment in Europe
Introduction
This study was performed with the support of the European FP7 project ARCHER. Its first phase aimed at evaluating the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of high temperature nuclear reactors (HTR) in Europe.
Section 2 will address the external context of HTR while Section 3 will cover salient technical strengths and potential weaknesses of HTR.
Section snippets
External context of HTR in Europe and impact on deployment
The European context is crucial to develop and deploy HTR successfully in Europe. It provides opportunities of which HTR should take maximum benefit and threats that should be alleviated at best. HTR are put in the context of the liberalised market with competing technologies, in the European energy policy framework and industry and of international cooperation.
Technical aspects of HTR concepts
This section presents some technical aspects which are to be considered as strengths or weaknesses. Some of them deal with HTRs in which the He outlet temperature is particularly high (order of 950 °C, Very High Temperature Reactor VHTR) to power specific thermochemical processes, e.g. for hydrogen production. We also shortly outline strategies to deliver such a very high temperature heat product, but without imposing these temperatures on the entire reactor.
General SWOT analysis for HTR
Analysing the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of HTR in Europe is a prerequisite to deploying this technology. Strengths and weaknesses relate to intrinsic features of a specific technology while opportunities and threats look at the general context.
Any innovative technology that goes beyond a business as usual level significantly impacts the activities of the stakeholders, e.g. in the case of HTR licensing authorities, nuclear operators and industrial heat end-users.
Conclusion
The objective of this SWOT analysis is to analyse HTR technology in its context and to position it with respect to competing technologies.
Cogeneration and electricity were found to be potentially attractive markets for HTR. European policies on energy and CO2 emissions are favourable to low-carbon energies like uncertainties around gas supply and price. HTR technology would, however, have to compete against established technologies. Some aspects, not necessarily specific to HTR, remain
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Retired from Forschungszentrum Jülich and Prof. emeritus from RWTH Aachen Nordstr. 25, D-52428 Jülich, Germany.