Investigation of Risk-­‐Informed Methodologies to Improve Sodium-­‐Cooled Fast Reactor Economics With Safety and Non-­‐Proliferation Constraints

Report Date: October 2011
Appendices: No
 
Executive Summary

 

Our project was undertaken as a collaborative research effort of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, The Ohio State University, and Idaho State University. It was motivated by the interest at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) in the potential for the use of electricity producing sodium-cooled fast reactors (SFR) as a means to greatly reduce the burden on geologic repositories of long-lived radioisotopes generated in light water reactors. The role of an actinide burner is substantially different from the historical role of electricity producing SFRs as plutonium breeders. Nevertheless, the results of this study are also applicable to SFRs in the traditional role of a breeder reactor. Although there exists considerable worldwide experience in the design and operation of SFR demonstration plants, it is generally recognized that the capital costs of SFRs are likely to be higher than those of LWRs. The DOE recognized that in order for SFRs to be successfully introduced, they would have to be economically competitive. The objective defined for this project then was to develop and demonstrate a methodology by which the cost of generating electricity by SFRs could be made economically competitive while achieving acceptable levels of safety and proliferation resistance.

In order to benefit from the past history of SFR development work, an advisory committee for the project was established of senior representatives from General Electric, Argonne National Laboratory, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and Idaho National Laboratory. Representatives of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission also participated in the meetings of the advisory committee.

There has been accumulated considerable operating experience in the U.S. and world-wide with SFRs, built either as test facilities or as demonstration plants. Very active programs for the development of fast reactors exist in Japan, France, Russia, China and Kazakhstan. Although the U.S. had at one time been the world leader in fast reactor development, at the time of our project the U.S. role has become primarily that of a collaborative long-term effort through the GEN-IV program. U.S. experience with operation of the EBR-II facility in Idaho was particularly favorable. Within that program reactor transient tests were performed that demonstrated the inherent safety characteristics of a pool-type SFR design having a metallic fuel core. The results of that program provided the basis for a major commitment by the General Electric Company to develop a reactor of this type, called PRISM. It has gone through a number of design evolutions. The PRISM reactor concept continues to be pursued by General Electric as a possible small, modular reactor.

Program:     NSP Nuclear Systems Enhanced Performance
Type:     PR 

RPT. No.: 30