national Projects
Czechia
Main platform for national support of technology research and development in the Czech Republic is Technology Agency of the Czech Republic (TACR). It is an organizational unit of the state that was founded in 2009 by the Act No. 130/2002 Coll. on the support of research, experimental development and innovation. The creation of TA CR is one of the cornerstones of the fundamental reforms in research and development (R&D) in the Czech Republic. The key features of the reform is the redistribution of financial support from the national budget. The Technology Agency of the Czech Republic simplifies the state support of applied research and experimental development which has been fragmented and implemented by many bodies before the reform. In the past 10 years, UJV Rez and CVR submitted a number of project proposals to various calls of TACR, resulting in more than 10 projects actually supported by the organization, 8 of them being currently ongoing. The ongoing projects are listed in the following table.
As can be seen from the timeline above , majority of the ongoing projects is focused on material development, since it was identified as the most pressing area. Safety research and development of systems and components closely follows.
Another notable achievement is successful full commissioning of an electrical heated 1 MW mock-up of GFR called S-ALLEGRO in 2020. This facility plays a key role in thermal-hydraulics and safety research of GFRs, and will be a vital part of higher-TRL development and testing of systems and components in the near future.