Comparison of lead and sodium-cooled reactors - Safety, fuel cycle performance and some economical aspects

This paper compares the Lead-cooled Fast Reactor (LFR) and the Sodium-cooled Fast Reactor (SFR) regarding different aspects of the coolant, safety and economics. A brief review of design and safety experience of an SFR (BN-600) and some safety philosophy of the most developed LFR (BREST) are presented as well. The pros and cons of the lead and the sodium coolants are discussed. This paper presents results concerning the coolant temperature evolution during three accident scenarios, i.e. Loss-Of- Flow (LOF), Loss-Of-Heat-Sink (LOHS), and Total-Loss-Of-Power (TLOP). It also studies possible moderators, like BeO and hydrides, for the core designs to have negative reactivity feedbacks and favorable reactivity swings. LFR seems to be able to accommodate more minor actinides than SFR at comparable coolant and Doppler feedbacks. We show that LFR can be designed both to breed and burn transuranics from LWRs. The hydrides lead to the most favorable reactivity feedbacks, but the poorest reactivity swing. It is shown that the LFR can handle the LOF transient better than the SFR. This is due to the much lower pressure drop in the LFR core. The coolant outlet temperatures stabilize at 2050 K and 940 K for SFR and LFR, respectively when no feedbacks are considered. Investigations also concern the SFR's performance when the pitch-to-diameter was increased from 1.2 to 1.4. For the LOHS and TLOP accidents their temperature evolutions are milder for the LFR since lead has a 50% larger volumetric heat capacity. For the TLOP the core outlet temperature of the LFR peaks at 1080 K after 2 days. Regarding economics it appears easier to avoid an intermediate cycle in an LFR than an SFR. (authors)