A study on accident prevention of liquid metal reactors through operating experience analysis

A demonstration LMR (Liquid Metal Reactor), called as KALIMER (Korea Advanced LIquid MEtal Reactor), has been being developed as part of the nuclear mid and long-term projects of the government since 1997. To ensure the safety of the KALIMER, the capability to cope with accidents must be enhanced by incorporating means and measures to prevent and mitigate accidents into the design of the KALIMER. The means and measures can be found out through analyzing operating experience in LMRs. Therefore, operating experience reported in published literature was collected and analyzed for the following 9 foreign LMRs: MONJU, Superphenix, Phenix, PFR, JOYO, EBR-II, FFTF, BN-350, BN-600. The analyses results show that accidents can be categorized into the following major groups: sodium leakage, sodium fire, sodium-water reaction, abnormal decrease of core reactivity, components vibrations, sodium aerosol deposits. Based on the results of accident cause analysis for each category, the means and measures to prevent and mitigate the each accident category were obtained