Design Considerations for Economically Competitive Sodium Cooled Fast Reactors

Conference · Fri May 01 04:00:00 EDT 2009

OSTI ID:957556

Zhang, Hongbin; Zhao, Haihua

The technological viability of sodium cooled fast reactors (SFR) has been established by various experimental and prototype (demonstration) reactors such as EBR-II, FFTF, Phénix, JOYO, BN-600 etc. However, the economic competitiveness of SFR has not been proven yet. The perceived high cost premium of SFRs over LWRs has been the primary impediment to the commercial expansion of SFR technologies. In this paper, cost reduction options are discussed for advanced SFR designs. These include a hybrid loop-pool design to optimize the primary system, multiple reheat and intercooling helium Brayton cycle for the power conversion system and the potential for suppression of intermediate heat transport system. The design options for the fully passive decay heat removal systems are also thoroughly examined. These include direct reactor auxiliary cooling system (DRACS), reactor vessel auxiliary cooling system (RVACS) and the newly proposed pool reactor auxiliary cooling system (PRACS) in the context of the hybrid loop-pool design.

• Research Organization: Idaho National Laboratory (INL)
• Sponsoring Organization: DOE - NE
• DOE Contract Number: AC07-99ID13727
• OSTI ID: 957556
• Report Number(s): INL/CON-08-14889
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS
AFTER-HEAT REMOVAL
BRAYTON CYCLE
COOLING SYSTEMS
DESIGN
ECONOMICS
FAST REACTORS
HELIUM
NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS
REACTOR VESSELS
SODIUM
TRANSPORT
VIABILITY
sodium cooled fast reactor