Safety strategy of JSFR eliminating severe recriticality events and establishing in-vessel retention in the core disruptive accident

Abstract

In the Japan Sodium Cooled Fast Reactor (JSFR) design, elimination of severe power burst events in the Core Disruptive Accident (CDA) is intended as an effective measure to ensure retention of the core materials within the reactor vessel. The design strategy is to control the potential of excessive void reactivity insertion in the initiating phase by selecting appropriate design parameters such as maximum void reactivity on one hand, and to exclude core-wide molten-fuel-pool formation, which has been the main issue of CDA, by introducing an inner duct on the other hand. The effectiveness of these measures is evaluated based on existing experimental data and computer simulation with validated analytical tools. It is judged that the present JSFR design can exclude severe power burst events. Phenomenological consideration of general characteristics and preliminary evaluations for the long-term material relocation and cooling phases gave the perspective that in-vessel retention would be attained with appropriate design measures. © Atomic Energy Society of Japan.