Dry cleaning process test for fuel assembly of fast reactor plant system, 1; Pilot scale test for fuel pin bundle

Kudo, Hideyuki*; Otani, Yuichi*; Hara, Masahide*; Kato, Atsushi ; Ishikawa, Nobuyuki; Otaka, Masahiko; Nagai, Keiichi ; Saito, Junichi  ; Ara, Kuniaki ; Ide, Akihiro*

A next generation SFR in Japan has adopted an advanced dry cleaning system which consists of the argon gas blowing process to reduce the amount of metallic residual sodium remaining on spent fuel assemblies. This paper describes experimental and analytical work focusing on the amount of residual sodium remaining on a fuel pin bundle before and after the argon gas blowing process. The experiments were conducted using a sodium test loop and a short specimen consisting of a 7 pin bundle. The effects of the blowing gas velocity and the blowing time were quantitatively analyzed in the experiments. On the basis of these experimental results, evaluation models predicting the amount of the residual sodium were constructed.