Core design and safety studies for a small modular fast reactor

Conference · Sat Jul 01 00:00:00 EDT 2006

OSTI ID:22039763

Yang, W S; Cahalan, J E; Dunn, F E ^[1]

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1. Argonne National Laboratory, 9700 South Cass Avenue, Argonne, IL 60439 (United States)

The paper describes the core design and performance characteristics and the safety analysis results for a 50 MWe small modular fast reactor design that was developed jointly by ANL, CEA, and JNC as an international collaborative effort. The main goal in the core design was to achieve a 30-year lifetime with no refueling. In order to minimize the burnup reactivity swing, metal fuel with a high heavy metal volume fraction was selected. To enhance the proliferation resistance and actinide transmutation, all the transuranic (TRU) elements recovered from light water reactor spent fuel were used in a ternary alloy form of U-TRU-10Zr. A 125 MWt core design was developed, for which the burnup reactivity swing was only 1.6$ over the 30-year core lifetime. The average discharge burnup was 87 MWd/kg, and the maximum sodium void worth was 4.65$. The evaluated reactivity coefficients provided sufficient negative feedbacks. Shutdown margins of control systems were confirmed. Steady-state thermal-hydraulic analysis results showed that peak 2{sigma} cladding inner-wall and fuel centerline temperatures were less than design limits with sufficient margins. Detailed transient analyses for the total loss of power to reactor and intermediate coolant pumps showed that no fuel damage or cladding failure would occur, even when multiple safety systems were assumed to malfunction. (authors)

• Research Organization: American Nuclear Society, 555 North Kensington Avenue, La Grange Park, IL 60526 (United States)
• OSTI ID: 22039763
• Resource Relation: Conference: PHYSOR-2006: American Nuclear Society's Topical Meeting on Reactor Physics - Advances in Nuclear Analysis and Simulation, Vancouver, BC (Canada), 10-14 Sep 2006; Other Information: Country of input: France; 16 refs.
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

21 SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLANTS
BURNUP
CLADDING
COOLANTS
FAST REACTORS
FUEL ELEMENT FAILURE
HEAVY METALS
PROLIFERATION
REACTOR CONTROL SYSTEMS
SAFETY ANALYSIS
SAFETY MARGINS
SODIUM COOLED REACTORS
SPENT FUELS
STEADY-STATE CONDITIONS
TERNARY ALLOY SYSTEMS
THERMAL HYDRAULICS
TRANSURANIUM ELEMENTS
URANIUM
VOID COEFFICIENT
WATER COOLED REACTORS
ZIRCONIUM