Abstract
The next generation of nuclear energy systems, also known as Generation IV reactors, are being developed to meet the highest targets of safety and reliability, sustainability, economics, proliferation resistance, and physical protection, with improved performances compared with the currently licensed plants or those presently being built. Among the proposed technologies, lead-cooled fast reactors (LFRs) have been identified by nuclear industries in both Western and developing countries as being among the optimal Generation IV candidates. Since 2000, ENEA, the Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy, and Sustainable Economic Development is supporting the core design, safety assessment, and technological development of innovative nuclear systems cooled by heavy liquid metals (HLM) and, most recently, fully oriented on LFRs. ENEA is developing world-recognized skills in fast spectrum core design and is one of the largest European fleets of experimental facilities aiming at investigating HLM thermal-hydraulics, coolant chemistry control, corrosion behavior for structural materials, and material properties in the HLM environment, as well as at developing corrosion-protective coatings, components, instrumentation, and innovative systems, supported by experiments and numerical tools. Efforts are also dedicated to develop and validate numerical tools for specific application to HLM systems, ranging from neutronics codes, system and core thermal-hydraulic codes, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and fuel pin performance codes, including their coupling. The present work aims at highlighting the capabilities and competencies developed by ENEA so far in the framework of liquid metal technologies for Generation IV LFRs. In particular, an overview on the ongoing R&D experimental program will be depicted considering the current fleet of facilities, namely: CIRCE, NACIE-UP, LIFUS5, LECOR, BID-1, HELENA, RACHEL, and Mechanical Labs. An overview on the numerical activities performed so far and those presently ongoing is also reported. Finally, an overview of the ENEA contribution to the ALFRED Project in the frame of the FALCON international consortium is reported, mainly addressing the ongoing activity in terms of core design, technology development, and auxiliary systems design.
Highlights
Since 2000, ENEA has been strongly involved in the development of innovative nuclear systems cooled by heavy liquid metals (HLMs)
The blockage fuel pin simulator (FPS) (BFPS) test section installed into the NACIE-UP loop facility aimed to carry out suitable experiments to fully investigate the different flow blockage regimes in a 19 fuel pin bundle, providing experimental data in support of the development of advanced lead-cooled fast reactor European demonstrator (ALFRED)
Commercial deployment, DEMO-lead-cooled fast reactors (LFRs) ALFRED was addressed as being mandatory in the European framework, with the main goal to fill the gap from basic research to market penetration, typically suffering from lack of investment
Summary
Since 2000, ENEA has been strongly involved in the development of innovative nuclear systems cooled by heavy liquid metals (HLMs). The main rationale is the need to develop innovative nuclear systems aimed at supplying a large amount of energy, increasing sustainability, safety, reliability, proliferation resistance, and physical protection, and reducing costs. Along this pathway, since 2010, ENEA has started developing lead-cooled fast reactors (LFRs), and, in particular, the advanced lead-cooled fast reactor European demonstrator (ALFRED), sharing with ANSALDO NUCLEARE and RATEN-ICN a vision to fully demonstrate LFR technology viability. Research Initiative in a Collaborative Innovation Action” project will investigate advanced partitioning to efficiently separate the radioactive chemical Americium from spent fuel, and it will study the development of transmutation systems. A general overview of the main activities ongoing/performed in ENEA is depicted
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