Sweden: Autonomous Reactivity Control (ARC) Systems

The next generation of nuclear energy systems must be licensed, constructed, and operated in a manner that will provide a competitively priced supply of energy, keeping in consideration an optimum use of natural resources, while addressing nuclear safety, waste, and proliferation resistance, and the public perception concerns of the countries in which those systems are deployed. These issues are tightly interconnected, and the implementation of passive and inherent safety features is a high priority in all modern reactor designs since it helps to tackle many of the issues at once. To this end, the Autonomous Reactivity Control (ARC) system was developed to ensure excellent inherent safety performance of Generation-IV reactors while having a minimal impact on core performance and economic viability. This paper covers the principles for ARC system design and analysis, the problem of ensuring ARC system response stability and gives examples of the impact of installing ARC systems in well-known fast reactor core systems. It is shown that even with a relatively modest ARC installation, having a near-negligible impact on core performance during standard operation, cores such as the European Sodium Fast Reactor (ESFR) can be made to survive any postulated unprotected transient without coolant boiling or fuel melting