Passive safety in the SAFR design

The Sodium Advanced Fast Reactor (SAFR) has been designed to provide an advanced level of safety assurance. A defense-in-depth design approach to the accommodation of transients is utilized to protect both plant investment and public safety. A hierarchy of highly reliable engineered systems is used for the initial lines of defense. The ultimate safety protection mode relies on the inherent response of the SAFR plant to ensure a safe response to all credible events in addition to postulated accidents without scram. This inherency is made economically possible by such distinct SAFR design characteristics as a pool-type configuration, a metal-fuel core, and natural convection decay heat removal systems. Transient analyses and probabilistic risk assessment results are presented to demonstrate the viability of the SAFR safety approach