Research and development in support of the gemini initiative
GEMINI+ project proposal will be submitted to the European Commission addressing the 2016 Euratom call for proposals (deadline October 5th, 2016).
GEMINI+ project will provide a conceptual design for a high temperature nuclear cogeneration system for supply of process steam to industry, a framework for the licensing of such system and a business plan for a full scale demonstration .
It will rely on modular High Temperature Gas cooled Reactor (HTGR) technology, which is a mature technology with several industrial prototypes that have been constructed and operated in the world. Therefore the time scale for the industrial deployment of such nuclear cogeneration systems is the decade. With available materials and technology, such a system can provide steam to industrial steam distribution networks presently operating on industrial sites up to 550˚C, simply substituting to fossil fuel fired cogeneration plants, without any need for adaptation of the steam distribution infrastructure or of the industrial applications. In the longer term, HTGR technology can be further developed to provide higher temperature process heat.
Based on its huge thermal inertia, its refractory fuel and core structural materials, on the use of helium, which is chemically inert, as coolant, and of a specific design limited to a few hundred Megawatts, modular HTGRs have a unique intrinsic safety concept preventing in any circumstances significant degradation of the nuclear fuel and consecutive radioactive releases, with no need of any human intervention. 
Beyond industrial cogeneration, the flexibility, robustness and simple design of modular HTGR will allow extending application of the system developed by GEMINI+ to small isolated electric grids, to electric grids with increasing proportion of intermittent renewables, to new nuclear countries, etc.