TRADE Final Feasibility Report

The TRADE experiment, to be performed in the TRIGA reactor of the ENEA-Casaccia Centre, consists in the coupling of an external proton accelerator to a target to be installed in the central channel of the reactor scrammed to sub-criticality. This pilot experiment, aimed at a global demonstration of the ADS concept, is based on an original idea of Carlo Rubbia, presented at CEA in October 2000. A first feasibility report was produced on June 2001 by an ENEA (and partners) and CEA Working Group and delivered to the ENEA/CEA management on July 2001. This first report elucidated the representativity of the foreseen experiments in terms of dynamic behaviour, reactivity control, proton current/power relation, operation at start-up and shut-down, external source importance measurements, etc.. The type of target, its cooling and coupling to the reactor at power was also addressed. The range of sub-criticality levels that can be explored was indicated to be between k = 0.90 (i.e. source dominated mode) and k = 0.99 (i.e. reactor feedback dominated mode). Finally, an overall lay-out of the experiment was set up and the safety and licensing aspects were analysed at a very preliminary stage. The present revision of the feasibility report adds a number of relevant features, according to a request by the CEA and ENEA management. The results of these new studies confirm the general conclusions of the 2001 report as far as feasibility, and provide further credibility to a realistic implementation of the experiment in the time horizon of 2006-2008.