Investigation of molten salt fast breeder reactor

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Phase I of feasibility studies on commercialized fast reactor system is being peformed for two years from Japanese Fiscal Year 1999. In this report, results of the study on fluid fuel reactors (especialiy a molten salt fast breeder reactor concept) are described from the viewpoint of technical and economical concerns of the plant system design. ln JFY1999, we have started to investigate the fluid fuel reactors as alternative concepts of sodium cooled FBR systems with MOX fuel, and selected the unique concept of a molten chloride fast, breeder reactor, whose U-Pu fuel cycle can be related to both light water reactors and fast breeder reactors on the basis of present technical data and design experiences. We selected a preliminary composition of molten fuel and conceptual plant design through evaluation of technical and economical issues essential for the molten salt reactors and then compared them with reference design concepts of sodium cooled FBR systems under limited information on the molten chloride fast breeder reactors. The following results were obtained. (1)The molten chloride fast breeder reactors have inherent safety features in the core and plant performances, ad the fluid fuel is quite promising for cost reduction of the fuel fabrication and reprocessing. (2)On the other hand, the inventory of the molten chloride fuel becomes high and thermal conductivity of the coolant is inferior compared to those of sodium cooled FBR systems, then, the size of main components such as lHX's becomes larger and the amount of construction materials is seems to be increased. (3)Furthermore economical vessel and piping materials which contact with the molten chloride salts are required to be developed. From the results, it is concluded that further steps to investigate the molten chloride fast breeder reactor concepts are too early to be conducted.