Current Design Status of Sodium Cooled Super-Safe, Small and Simple Reactor

Abstract

CRIEPI has been exploring to realize a small-sized nuclear reactor for the needs of dispersed energy source and multi-purpose reactor. And a conceptual design of 4S (Super-Safe, Small and Simple) reactor was proposed to meet the following design requirements: (1) All temperature feedback reactivity coefficients including whole core sodium void coefficient are negative; (2) The core integrity is secured against all anticipated transient without reactor scram; (3) No emergency power nor active mitigating system is required; (4) The reactivity core life time is more than 10 years; (5) Its construction, maintenance and operation are expected to be very simple by eliminating active components from inside of a reactor vessel. The 4S reactor is a sodium cooled fast reactor and its reactivity is not controlled by neutron absorber rods but by neutron reflectors. An electrical output is 50 MW. This paper describes a design modification to enhance the feasibility from the previous 4S design. A core active height can be shortened to 1.5 m from 4.0m to keep the reactivity characteristics. An averaged fuel burn-up is up to 70 GWD/ton and a pressure drop at the core region is less than 0.1 MPa. A reactivity control system is modified according with the core design change. As for the steam generator design, sodium-water reaction accidents must be taken into account as a design basis event for the utilization of the secondary sodium coolant. Therefore, a modified plate type heat exchanger is proposed as a steam generator. It may be possible to develop a compact steam generator, which is free from sodium-water reaction accidents and to eliminate the secondary sodium systems. The 4S reactor without secondary system has been proposed as a candidate design.