Project results are expected to contribute to some of the following expected outcomes:

• Demonstrate that advanced systems can be designed, sited, constructed, commissioned, operated and decommissioned in line with the requirements of the Nuclear Safety Directive, Basic Safety Standards Directive and Radioactive Waste Management Directive, with particular focus on their safety features and passive safety systems.
• Establish, for example through regular exchanges, a shared and coherent approach among regulators to safety requirements for different advanced systems, further improving safety across the Community.
• Innovate in all safety aspects of advanced systems, including their key features (generation of less high-level waste, improved use of resources, and higher thermal efficiencies), allowing some Member States to contribute to the energy transition according to and respecting the EU technology neutrality principle and thus increase Member State and EU energy security.

Further research and innovation is needed to demonstrate the safety of advanced systems that offer increased sustainability, new non-electricity applications and flexibility in terms of adaptation to the energy mix with intermittent/variable sources. These advanced reactor technologies could also be deployed as small modular reactors, combining their specific properties and advanced coolant technologies.

Research proposals should:

• Keep the focus on safety by design, aiming at achieving a scientific consensus to ease the understanding and appropriation by the regulators of any innovative reactor concepts and their associated fuel cycles.
• Cover the viability phase of advanced technologies, when basic concepts are tested under relevant conditions. For example, proof of concept of better safety features, confirmation of safety improvements during the performance phase when engineering-scale processes are verified and optimised under prototypical conditions, and the demonstration phase when detailed design is completed and licensing is carried out.
• Further investigate safety aspects of selected advanced reactor systems and the use of non-water coolants and fluid fuel designs, higher operational temperatures also related to the option of industrial process heat production and H₂ generation and higher reactor power density in order to assess their potential, proliferation resistance, radioactive waste management (waste minimisation ‘by design’, decommissioning ‘by design’), emergency management and response, human and environmental impact, safeguards, social perception and their effects on the long-term sustainability of fuel cycles. On waste aspects, appropriate links should be established with relevant initiatives within the EURAD-2 partnership.
• Further investigate safety aspects of operational flexibility in an integrated energy system, for example by design and safety demonstration of intermediate heat storage facilities or other means.