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In 2016, the Ministry of Energy established a departmental Committee, which was responsible for the elaboration on recommendations for the implementation of High Temperature Gas-cooled Reactors (HTGRs) in Poland. As a result of the Committee recommendation and after report approval by the Minister the HTGR technology was included in the strategic national documents (e. g. Strategy for Responsible Development, Smart Specialization, Energy policy of Poland till 2040, PNPP and others).
HTGRs are cooled by chemically inert gases such as helium or carbon dioxide with graphite moderator and TRISO fuel. The fuel kernel, is either uranium dioxide (UO2) or a mixture of uranium oxide and uranium carbides (UCO), is coated with layers of carbon, pyrolytic graphite (PyC) and silicon carbide (SiC), and therefore has a higher resistance to high temperatures than LWR fuel. The coolant temperature in HTGRs can achieve 750-950ᵒC and the outlet temperature for industrial application can equal at least 550ᵒC. In 2019-2022, Ministry of Climate and Environment, National Centre for Nuclear Research and the Institute for Chemistry and Nuclear Technology (IChTJ) got involved in the National Strategy Program GOSPOSTRATEG-HTR. The project was entitled ”Preparation of legal, organizational and technical instruments for the HTR implementation”. Within this project some important steps toward HTGR implementation were made with the final output being the pre-conceptual design of a research reactor. Since 2022, National Centre for Nuclear Research is working on the research HTGR basic design, in the frame of the HTGR project, financed by Ministry of Education and Science was established. This is the next step to design 30MWth Polish High Temperature Gas-cooled Reactor HTGR-POLA.
General overview of the HTGR technology and current stage of the 30MWth research reactor HTGR-POLA (POLish Atomic) design, will be presented.