Japan and Poland have signed an agreement to cooperate on high-temperature gas-cooled reactor (HTGR) technology with the aim of building a plant in the European country.
The agreement, for the development of a basic design and a preliminary safety report, was signed by the president of the Japanese Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA), Koguchi Masanori and the director of Poland’s National Centre for Nuclear Research (NCBJ) Krzysztof Kurek.
NCBJ said HTGRs are capable of supplying heat for the chemical and petrochemical industries. They will be able to replace fossil fuel installations, leading to the decarbonisation of many production processes. They can also enable the economic production of clean hydrogen.
Several attempts have been made to build reactors of this type, but none has so far entered commercial service.
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