Study on countermeasures for the elimination of re-criticality issue for the sodium cooled reactors; Results of the Studies in 2003

Kubo, Shigenobu ; Tobita, Yoshiharu; Kawada, Kenichi   ; Onoda, Yuichi ; Sato, Ikkenn ; Kamiyama, Kenji  ; Ueda, Nobuyuki*; Fujita, Satoshi; Niwa, Hajime

This report shows the results of the study on countermeasures for the elimination of re-criticality issue for the sodium cooled reactors, which was conducted in 2003 as a part of the feasibility study phase II for the commercialization of fast reactors. A sort of analytical studies related to the in-vessel retention capability under the unprotected loss of flow condition was conducted for the large scale and medium scale sodium cooled reactors, aiming at establishing some promising concepts to resolve the re-criticality issue keeping consistency with the basic concept of the core and plant design. Major conclusions are as follows. ABLE concept, which is proposed as a measure to enhance the fuel discharge capability in the early transition phase, needs much time to initiate fuel discharge than wrapper tube failure. Therefore it is currently concluded that it is difficult to show clear perspective. A modified version of FAIDUS which has less drawbacks on the core and cycle performance and related R&Ds than original FAIDUS was proposed for further study. In-place retention and cooling in the core region is important from view point of reduction of R&D loads conceming post accident material relocation and cooling at the bottom of the reactor vessel. A possibility of which the in-vessel retention can be achieved by quantitatively clarifying the effect of the superior cooling potential of sodium was shown. Based on the currently available information related to FAIDUS and ABLE, possible candidates of experimental studies were shown. An initiating phase analysis for the metallic fuel core with 550C of core outlet temperature and 8 of sodium void worth resulted in mild consequence without prompt criticality. Although there is still large uncertainty in the early transition phase, it might be possible to avoid severe re-criticality. And it was shown that power excursion due to molten fuel sloshing might be milder than that of MOX fuel case.