Conceptual design for Japan sodium-cooled fast reactor, 3; Development of advanced fuel handling system for JSFR

Kato, Atsushi ; Hirata, Shingo; Chikazawa, Yoshitaka  ; Uto, Nariaki  ; Obata, Hiroyuki; Kotake, Shoji

One of the most important challenges to commercialize a Fast Reactor is to increase economic competitiveness. For that purpose, Japan Sodium cooled Fast Reactor (hereafter JSFR) aims to simplify the plant system and reduce the raw and processed material by adopting innovative technologies. In the JSFR design, a single rotating plug and a reactor upper inner structure (hereafter UIS) with a vertically penetrating slit are proposed, so that the fuel handling machine (hereafter FHM) can access any subassembly by horizontal movement of the FHM arm in the slit space. The feature of this FHM enables no need for the UIS removal when the rotational plug moves round above the core, which can achieve a compact reactor vessel to enhance the economic competitiveness. We fabricated the full scale FHM test equipment to perform comprehensive tests in the air for demonstrating the feasibility of the key characteristics of this FHM concept.