Abstract
New strategic challenges, like transmutation for waste minimization, justify current efforts to develop advanced modelling and simulation. However, these efforts should be matched by parallel efforts in order to improve nuclear data and to develop simple methods aiming for a deeper physics understanding. For example in the case of transmutation, one has to find out how to compare effectively different systems/strategies: a new paradigm (the D concept) has been proposed for that purpose. Moreover, since transmutation affects not only reactor core but fuel cycle performances too, in order to compare different fuel cycle options, a new method, based on the generalisation of the Bateman equation, has been proposed (the E-method). For both the D and the E-methods, nuclear data understanding is essential.

Nominal performances can help a first down-selection of transmutation concepts/strategies. However, high accuracy is needed to optimise reactor core and fuel cycle characteristics. Nuclear data uncertainties play a key role and sensitivity/uncertainty methods should be used to quantify their impact. To meet requirements, the role of integral experiments are still essential, since they provide the needed validation database and, if used within the so-called “statistical adjustment” strategies, they allow envisaging nuclear data improvements, consistent with the nuclear cross section model descriptions. In this frame, innovative analytical techniques and new “smart” experiments have been proposed, and they will be shortly described.

Biography
Dr. Salvatores holds a Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Turin (Italy). After theoretical and experimental research at the Italian Atomic Energy Commission and at Argonne National Laboratory in the early 1970s, he joined the Commissariat à l'Energie Atomique (CEA-Cadarache , France) as head of the Reactor Physics Laboratory in charge of the SUPERPHENIX startup experiments. He then headed the CEA Reactor and Fuel Cycle Physics Division, in charge of theoretical method development and experimental work both for thermal and fast reactors.

In the 1990s he chaired the Nuclear Science Committee and the Joint Evaluated Nuclear Data File (JEF) project of the OECD-NEA. Dr. Salvatores has led and still leads numerous national and international studies on Pu management and innovative recycling strategies, and on Partitioning and Transmutation technologies. As for Accelerator Driven Systems,
Dr. Salvatores launched the first subcritical experiments (MUSE at Cadarache) and the 1MW Liquid Metal Spallation Target Experiment (MEGAPIE), which was successfully completed at PSI (Switzerland) in 2006.

Moreover, he still performs basic research work on nuclear data sensitivity and uncertainty analysis and on advanced simulation validation. He leads research programs in these fields both for DOE and for OECD-NEA.

Dr. Salvatores was awarded in 2002 the “Grand Prix Ampère” of the French Academy of Sciences; the American Nuclear Society (ANS) Nuclear Technology Award; and in 2005 the “E. Wigner” Award of the ANS. He is also a fellow of the ANS.

He has more than 200 articles on various (often original) aspects of reactor physics and nuclear fuel cycles. He has also served as Professor at the National Institute for Nuclear Sciences and Technology (INSTN) and teaches courses at the Ecole National Superieure de Chimie in Paris . He was the founder of the International Summer School in Reactor Physics “Frédéric Joliot/Otto Hahn”.

Dr. Massimo Salvatores is scientific advisor to the Director of the Nuclear Energy Division of CEA and also serves as senior advisor at the Idaho National Laboratory and at the Argonne National Laboratory. In 2007 has been named Policy Director of the Generation-IV International Forum.