Inherent Prevention and Mitigation of Severe Accident Consequences in Sodium-Cooled Fast Reactors

Safety challenges for sodium-cooled fast reactors include maintaining core temperatures within design limits and assuring the geometry and integrity of the reactor core. Due to the high power density in the reactor core, heat removal requirements encourage the use of high-heat-transfer coolants such as liquid sodium. The variation of power across the core requires ducted assemblies to control fuel and coolant temperatures, which are also used to constrain core geometry. In a fast reactor, the fuel is not in the most neutronically reactive configuration during normal operation. Accidents leading to fuel melting, fuel pin failure, and fuel relocation can result in positive reactivity, increasing power, and possibly resulting in severe accident consequences including recriticalities that could threaten reactor and containment integrity. Inherent safety concepts, including favorable reactivity feedback, natural circulation cooling, and design choices resulting in favorable dispersive characteristics for failed fuel, can be used to increase the level of safety to the point where it is highly unlikely, or perhaps even not credible, for such severe accident consequences to occur.