3. Innovative SMRs or Advanced Modular Reactors

Since the early 2000s, an international forum, GIF (Generation IV International Forum), has been in place to exchange and share advances in breakthrough designs compared with water reactors (known as Generation 3+ for the most recent designs in this sector). Generation 4 designs have multiple objectives. They include: new advances in safety, better use of the energy potential of nuclear materials, reduced quantities of long-lived radioactive waste, enhanced performance for uses other than power generation...

The technologies concerned are essentially fast neutron reactors, high-temperature reactors and molten-salt reactors. All have been explored in the past with mixed success:

• fast reactors using sodium as coolant are the most mature