Comparison of sodium-cooled reactor fuel-handling systems with and without an ex-vessel storage tank

Chikazawa, Yoshitaka  ; Uzawa, Masayuki*; Usui, Shinichi*; Tozawa, Katsuhiro*; Kotake, Shoji

JSFR is a concept of a commercial sodium-cooled fast reactor which has been being studied in Fast Reactor Cycle Technology Development (FaCT) project since 2006. For the JSFR fuel handling, various fuel handling systems (FHSs) were investigated and an advanced FHS with an ex-vessel storage tank (EVST) has been selected. The other FHS concepts investigated are evolutional FHSs without an EVST. The result has indicated that the construction cost of the evolutional systems do not reduce the construction cost dramatically, which is mainly due to additional safety measures required higher decay heat handling in gas atmosphere and due to the necessity of separated fresh and failed fuel storage. From an economical point of view, a longer plant outage of the evolutional systems offsets its advantage of the lower construction cost. On the basis of the results of this comparative study, JSFR has selected the FHS with an EVST.