A Design study on a large FBR plant enhancing passive safety

Hayashi, Hideyuki; not registered; not registered  

A conceptual design study on a 1300MWe large FBR plant was performed with focusing on enhancing passive safety and capital cost reduction. Spectrum-adjusted mixed nitride fueled core in which zirconium hydride was added, was applied to enlarge Doppler reactivity coefficient. Breeding ratio of 1.2 was obtained only with one layer of radial blanket subassemblies by optimizing the content of the zirconium hydride. The optimization also lightened the burden to the reactor structure through the reduction of the core diameter. Reactor passive shutdown were performed in the ATWS events of ULOF and ULOHS, and UTOP caused by one control rod full runout was endurable under the criterion of the prevention of coolant boiling. The safety feature can be called as inherent safety, because the feature comes only from the reactivity characteristics of the core. The integrities of the reactor structures which characterize head-access loop type reactor were evaluated on the transient thermal stress at the loss of flow accident and on seismic strain. Vertical strain of core support plate at loss of flow condition was also evaluated on the passive shutdown at ULOF. The capital cost of the large FBR plant was estimated 1.3 to 1.4 times as high as that of the same scale LWR based on the weight of major components.