EC-JRC-ITU
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European Commission - DG Joint Research Centre - Institute for TransUranium elements |
The Institute for TransUranium elements (ITU) is one of the few European centres dedicated to Actinide research with appropriate operating facilities (hot cells, Minor Actinide Lab., nuclearised instruments for physical, chemical and analytical experiments…), with a statutory staff of 209 in 2001, an institutional budget of 34 M€/year, and a competitive budget assigned to institutional activities of 7,5 M€. It is one of the JRC…
As one of the European Joint Research Centre Institutes, ITU's prime objectives are to serve as a reference centre for basic actinide research, to contribute to an effective safety and safeguards system for the nuclear fuel cycle, and to study technological and medical applications of transuranium elements. In the frame of the EURATOM programme and in line with its mission, the Institute for Transuranium Elements responds to the concerns of the European citizens by performing customer driven research and basic and exploratory research.
A good knowledge of fundamental physical, chemical and materials science data on actinides and actinide-containing products, i.e. nuclear fuels and nuclear waste, is the basis for addressing nuclear issues at ITU. ITU scientists aim at developing an understanding of these properties, including the electronic structure of actinides and actinide compounds. Four major research topics are developed:
- Preparation and characterisation of actinide elements and compounds: Concerning fuel cycle safety actinide research contributes to the basic understanding by the structural studies of actinide compounds in both, polycrystalline and single crystals forms. ITU activity aims at providing these materials for both internal and external “customers”.
- Material Science: Present systems (safety, optimisation of lifetime and burn-up), future systems (new concepts and new processes), fuel behaviour under irradiation, intermediate storage, long term storage, targets for transmutation, waste management, etc require material science data on actinides and actinide-containing products. ITU scientists aim at developing a profound understanding of thermo-physical and thermodynamic properties of refractory nuclear materials.
- Investigation of the solid state physics of actinides: From a theoretical point of view, expanding the knowledge on 5f elements is a task of ITU as these elements possess magnetic and superconductive properties not expected using the description of f orbitals derived from the properties of 4f (lanthanides) elements.
- Surface and Interface Science of Actinide materials: Many processes in the nuclear fuel cycle are dependent on the behaviour of actinide elements in different chemical and physical forms. Of particular interest are phenomena at the interface (fuel-cladding interactions, lixiviation of spent fuel in intermediate or final disposal…). Therefore tailor-made thin films, clusters of atoms or multi-layers of actinides are studied at ITU.
ITU will contribute to the setting of the ACTINET multi-site user facility by pooling a number of nuclearised instruments for the study of solid-state properties of actinide compounds, solid and liquid thermodynamics, thermophysics radiation damage, and solid-liquid interface chemistry.
Finally, in giving active support to the scientific community by giving access to its facilities to host scientists, ITU gives particular attention to training the next generation of scientists, especially those from Member States and Candidates Countries, which lack of nuclear installations suitable for training.
For more information: http://itu.jrc.cec.eu.int.
Address
European Commission - DG Joint Research Centre - Institute for TransUranium elements
P.O Box 2340
D-76125 Karlsruhe
Germany
Contactperson(s)
Jean-Paul GLATZ
+49 72 47 95 13 21
+49 72 47 95 15 61
