Development of argon gas cleaning for sodium-cooled reactor spent fuel

Chikazawa, Yoshitaka  ; Kato, Atsushi ; Obata, Hiroyuki*

Japan Sodium-cooled Fast Reactor (JSFR) is going to adopt an advanced fuel handling system. From the viewpoint of spent fuel cleaning, a new dry cleaning process instead of the conventional process with water rinse is under developing. In this study, drain performance tests on the JSFR subassembly inner duct and dry cleaning performance tests with a full-scale mockup subassembly are summarized. Based on the experimental data of the inner duct and mockup subassembly tests, residual sodium on the spent fuel subassembly after argon gas cleaning has been evaluated to be 400g. Water alkalinity and purification performance has been evaluated and the JSFR water pool system has shown capability to accept 400g residual sodium on the spent fuel subassembly after argon gas cleaning.