CP ESFR: Collaborative Project for a European Sodium Fast Reactor Core studies

• Significant progress has been made in optimizing both the oxide and carbide ESFR cores; • For the oxide core the optimisation process concentrated on the reduction of the sodium void reactivity effect and on the evaluation of MA burning performances. The CONF2 axial configuration has provided a significant overall reduction of the sodium void reactivity effect. • The carbide core had a significantly higher reactivity loss over the fuel cycle compared to the oxide one. By increasing slightly the fuel pin diameter, whilst still retaining the advantages of lower fuel temperatures of carbide fuel, and making changes in the core layout, the reactivity loss over the cycle has been reduced to a level similar to that of the oxide core. By adopting the CONF2 axial configuration initially developed for the oxide core, the sodium void reactivity of the carbide core has also been reduced appreciably. • The MA transmutation performances of the optimized ESFR oxide core have been investigated with respect to two boundary configurations. The HET2 configuration shows a low MA transmutation rate sufficient to burn the MA produced by the ESFR core without affecting the safety parameters. The HOM4 configuration (where 4%wt. MA are loaded homogeneously in each core SA) is the most challenging configuration due to its impact on safety coefficients but it shows an high MA burning rate suitable for burning also MA accumulated by a thermal reactor fleet