Preliminary study of the decay heat removal strategy for the gas demonstrator allegro

Abstract

The helium cooled Gas Fast Reactor (GFR) is one of the six reactor concepts selected in the frame of the Generation IV International Forum. Since no gas cooled fast reactor has ever been built, a medium power demonstrator reactor – named ALLEGRO – is necessary on the road towards the 2400 MWth GFR power reactor. The French Commissariat à l’Energie Atomique (CEA) completed a wide range of studies during the early stage of development of ALLEGRO, and later the ALLEGRO reactor concept was developed in several European Union projects in parallel with the GFR2400. The 75MW thermal power ALLEGRO is currently developed in the frame of the European ALLIANCE project. As a result of the collaboration between CEA and the Hungarian Academy of Sciences Centre for Energy Research (MTA EK) new improvements were done in the safety approach of ALLEGRO. A complete Decay Heat Removal (DHR) strategy was devised, relying on the primary circuits as a first way to remove decay heat using pony-motors to drive the primary blowers, and on the secondary and tertiary circuits being able to work in forced or natural circulation. Three identical dedicated loops circulating in forced convection are used as a second way to remove decay heat, and these loops can circulate in natural convection for pressurized transients, providing a third way to remove decay heat in case of accidents when the primary circuit is still under pressure. The possibility to use nitrogen to enhance both forced and natural circulation is discussed. This DHR strategy is supported by a wide range of accident transient simulations performed using the CATHARE2 code. This paper presents the DHR strategy selected for ALLEGRO and the CATHARE2 simulations are supporting this strategy.