High-assay low-enriched uranium metal (HALEU) is a critical resource required for the operation of research reactors and the production of pharmaceutical radioisotopes. Its availability is essential for advancing nuclear energy safety, materials science, basic scientific research, and the performance of about 40 million nuclear medicine procedures worldwide each year. Until recently, EU has relied on Russia and the USA for its supply of HALEU. Russian supplies are expected to be unavailable for an extended period, and the future availability of US supplies remains uncertain: it is thus imperative for EU to establish its own HALEU production capacity. The PreP-HALEU initiative represents a preparatory phase aimed at producing essential components and evaluating the technical pathways for establishing this capacity in EU. This project consortium brings together all key stakeholders, including enrichment companies, fuel manufacturers, research organizations, and medical radioisotope producers. Through this collaborative effort, PreP-HALEU intends to: • Generate substantial technical, economic, and regulatory information to support the decision-making process. • Foster alignment among the countries and parties involved in establishing a EU HALEU capability as a shared asset. Within the framework of PreP-HALEU, the quantitative requirements for HALEU metal will be updated, and working groups will delve into enrichment, metallization, and transportation considerations. The integration of these elementary bricks will be extensively discussed to create a coherent project dynamic and consistently consolidate results into an executive summary, a key input for the decision-making phase. The PreP-HALEU project, initiated in response to the NRT01-11 call for proposals, is a cornerstone in the establishment of a EU production capacity for metal HALEU. It plays a pivotal role in securing activities in the fields of research, healthcare, and innovation throughout EU.

In the framework of the joint international efforts to reduce the risk of proliferation by minimising the use of highly enriched uranium, a new research reactor fuel based on uranium-molybdenum (UMo) alloys is being developed by the HERACLES group. HERACLES is composed of AREVA-CERVA, CEA, ILL, SCK•CEN and TUM, all organisations with a long-standing history in fuel manufacturing and qualification. HERACLES works towards the qualification of UMo fuels, based on a series of “comprehension” experiments and manufacturing developments. There are two types of UMo fuel fine particles dispersed in an Al matrix, and monolithic foils. The qualification phase of these fuels is scheduled to begin in 2019; the project will prepare the way with an initial comprehension phase, to improve our understanding of the fuels’ irradiation behaviour and consequent the manufacturing/industrialisation process. One of the key components in the project is the SEMPER FIDELIS irradiation test, which aims at investigating the fuel swelling phenomenon and the effects of coating, with a view to arriving at procedures for fuel engineering. The challenges as regards manufacture lie in the basic elements of both fuel types’ production process and plate manufacturing. For the dispersed fuel, this includes the pin casting for the rotating electrode process and the atomization process itself. For the monolithic fuel, this concerns the development of coating for the foils. All these components are essential to prepare the fuel qualification phase. High-performance research reactors are at the start of the supply chain for medical isotopes like 99Mo. Successful conversion to lower enriched and where possible LEU fuel is therefore a key element in the mitigation of the risks surrounding the supply of isotopes as demanded by NFRP 8. However, the role of the HPRRs is far broader, as they are providing scientific and engineering solutions to questions of high societal importance.

By advancing breakthrough research on LOHC technologies, UnLOHCked aims at developing a radically disruptive, versatile and scalable LOHC-dehydrogenation plant. Firstly, highly active and stable catalysts without critical raw materials will be developed for reducing LOHC dehydrogenation at moderate temperatures. Secondly, an SOFC-system will be developed to be thermally integrated with the dehydrogenation process. The heat demand of the dehydrogenation unit will be fully covered by the fuel cell, while generating electric power. The surplus of hydrogen is exported. These innovative systems fully integrated will allow significant increase of overall efficiency (>50%) to hydrogen and electric power production from LOHC. Three industry partners, HERAEUS, HYGEAR and FRAMATOME, will collaborate with four universities and research centres, the University of Bilbao (Spain), CEA, CNRS-Lyon and North-West University of South Africa to develop scalable prototype system at TRL 5, validating the performance of the technology during at least 500 h. The ambition is to demonstrate the feasibility of a fully CO2-free dehydrogenation process for large-scale production of hydrogen (100-1,000 t H2/d) and electricity with competitive prices (hydrogen carrier delivery cost <2.5€/kg). Thus converting CO2-free LOHC to electricity and hydrogen instead of using NG or LPG as heat source. The UnLOHCked approach is clean & circular: it decreases energy consumption, does not use noble metals while generating CO2-free hydrogen and electricity. Techno-economic studies will demonstrate the potential of the technology to both supply hydrogen and renewable electricity to decarbonise the EU economy and to open-up hydrogen transportation by LOHC. FRAMATOME, HYGEAR AND HERAEUS will support the consortium preparing for fast market entry after the project.

ELSMOR (towards European Lisencing of Small MOdular Reactors) aims to create methods and tools for the European stakeholders to assess and verify the safety of light water small modular reactors (LW-SMR) that would be deployed in Europe. ELSMOR advances the understanding and technological solutions pertaining to light water SMRs on several fronts: • Collection, analysis, and dissemination of the information on the potential and challenges of Small Modular Reactors to various stakeholders, including the public, decision makers and regulators. • Development of the high level methods to assess the safety of LW-SMRs • Improvement of the European experimental research infrastructure to assist in the evaluation of the novel safety features of the future LW-SMRs. • Improvement of the European nuclear safety analysis codes to demonstrate the capability to assess the safety of the future LW-SMRs Establishing education and training in the field of innovative nuclear reactors for young professionals is also emphasized. The ELSMOR project is built upon the expertise of the consortium that consists of technical support organizations, technical research centres, industrial partners, and universities with the long experience in European nuclear safety analysis and the development and implementation of innovative nuclear technologies. The industrial partners include utilities, small medium sized enterprises as well as the consortium currently developing the French LW-SMR (F-SMR design). The developers of European safety analysis tools and other computer codes use their well-established paths for exploitation of the improved and validated simulation tools. The licencing approaches and methods would be expected to be directly utilized by SMR designers like the French consortium. The outcomes should make the licensing process more fluid and comprehensive; this should also be true from the regulator point of view.

As Internet of Things (IoT) and IoT-Edge-Cloud continuum technologies advance, physical environments are becoming increasingly equipped with sensors, fuelling the development of smart space ecosystems. Massive quantities of data produced by IoT devices revolutionize the way such ecosystems operate via the exploitation of AI models/services. This has led to the emergence of the so-called Artificial Intelligence of Things (AIoT) systems. In general, designing techniques to promote robustness, efficiency and continual operation of AIoT systems requires realistic and trustworthy data at scale. However, such data is not always easy to obtain due to the cost of smart space construction, the inconvenience of long-term device tracking, the sensor/knowledge data gaps in diverse scenarios of a smart space, and the restrictions imposed on sensitive data sharing. Furthermore, an efficient AIoT system operation requires trustworthy AI services, as well as novel approaches for speeding up their inference across the IoT-Edge/Cloud continuum. PANDORA aims to devise and implement a comprehensive framework enabling the delivery of trustworthy datasets of smart space ecosystems, as well as the deployment and green operation of AIoT systems in such spaces. PANDORA spans two phases: (1) prior to AIoT system deployment; (2) post AIoT system deployment and operation. Phase 1 proposes and combines a series of novel techniques such as synthetic data generation, quantification of uncertainties, and data summarization for the delivery of trustworthy datasets, as well as explainable AI and domain-informed model training/testing in smart space ecosystems. Phase 2 defines novel AIaaS and CaaS techniques for the robust, explainable, green and continual operation of AIoT systems deployed in such spaces. The trustworthiness and applicability of the PANDORA framework will be tested through five pilot cases hosting AIoT applications in smart buildings, factories and critical infrastructures.