Fast reactor development for sustainable nuclear energy supply in China

China needs a very huge energy supply for national economy development and living standard improvement of 1.3 billion population. The nuclear energy is a new member of the energy supply family in China. A satisfied operation records of all 11 units of NPPs, especially with the total average load factor 85.8% of all NPPs in 67 reactor-years since commercial operation of each unit encourage the public to believe that the nuclear power is a safe, reliable, economically-acceptable, CO2 avoidable one and could be used in large scale. The government has decided in 2006 to accelerate the nuclear power development with the target of 40GWe in operation and 18GWe in construction in 2020.Right now 13 units with total capacity 13.05GWe are under construction and other 11 units of total capacity 12.05GWe have been approved by the government and the preparation for construction is underway. For the sustainable supply of nuclear energy, as the principle strategy, PWR-FBR matched with closed nuclear fuel cycle has been decided by the government for a long time. Three FBR development strategy targets suggested as following. (1) to realize FBR commercial utilization in small batch in 2030; (2) to increase nuclear capacity to 240GWe, sharing about 16%, mainly by FBRs in 2050, and (3) to replace coal fired plants by nuclear power in large scale, in the period about 2050-2100. For that, the suggested FBR development strategy is shown in Table 1. China Experimental Fast Reactor (CEFR) with the power 65MWt is a pool type sodium-cooled fast reactor. Pre-conceptual design started in 1990 with the first pot of concrete in 2000, and architecture engineering launched in 2001. Now it is under commissioning tests stage. The experiences of design fabrication and construction for this type of reactor have been gained. The possibility of large striding from 20MWe CEFR to 800MWe China Demonstration Fast Reactor (CDFR) has been studied. The favorableness is estimated mainly as following. (1) The main technical scheme options of design for CEFR, CDFR and CDFBR have a basic consistency; (2) A set of computer codes, data files and design criteria of different specialties applied to sodium-cooled fast reactor were developed and their validation and verification are underway following the CEFR commissioning and pre-operation testing; (3) A set of fabrication enterprises and factory having fabricating license for nuclear safety grade components for fast reactor have been organized through CEFR construction; (4) A good international cooperation environment has been established. To support PWR-FBR matched strategy, the closed nuclear fuel cycle architecture is under development including 100t/a reprocessing pilot hot tested, an industrial reprocessing plant with the capacity about 1000t/a and MOX fuel manufacture plant of about 50t/a are under programming and carrying into execution