ESFR-SMART Core Safety Measures and Their Preliminary Assessment

A large 3600 MW-thermal European Sodium Fast Reactor (ESFR) concept has been studied in Horizon-2020 ESFR-SMART (ESFR Safety Measures Assessment and Research Tools) project since September 2017, following an earlier EURATOM project, CP-ESFR. In the paper, we describe new ESFR core safety measures focused on prevention and mitigation of severe accidents. In particular, we propose a new core configuration for reducing the sodium void effect, introduce passive shutdown systems, and implement special paths in the core for facilitation of molten fuel discharge in order to avoid re-criticalities after a hypothetical severe accident. We describe and assess the control and shutdown system, and consider options for burning minor actinides.

A simplified analysis of the Chernobyl accident

We show with simplified numerical models, that for the kind of RBMK operated in Chernobyl: The core was unstable due to its large size and to its weak power counter-reaction coefficient, so that the power of the reactor was not easy to control even with an automatic system. Xenon oscillations could easily be activated. When there was xenon poisoning in the upper half of the core, the safety rods were designed in such a way that, at least initially, they were increasing (and not decreasing) the core reactivity. This reactivity increase has been sufficient to lead to a very high pressure increase in a significant amount of liquid water in the fuel channels thus inducing a strong propagating shock wave leading to a failure of half the pressure tubes at their junction with the drum separators. The depressurization phase (flash evaporation) following this failure has produced, after one second, a significant decrease of the water density in half the pressure tubes and then a strong reactivity accident due to the positive void effect reactivity coefficient. We evaluate the fission energy released by the accident

MAPPING OF SODIUM VOID EFFECT AND DOPPLER CONSTANT IN ESFR-SMART CORE WITH MONTE CARLO CODE SERPENT AND DETERMINISTIC CODE ERANOS

The Sodium Fast Reactor is one of the most technologically developed Gen-IV reactors, which can close the nuclear fuel cycle. Its criticality safety directly depends on the sodium void effect and Doppler constant. Hence the knowledge of their local distribution is important. These coefficients can be mapped by deterministic or Monte Carlo codes, where the latter provide higher modeling accuracy, but are also strongly computer demanding and subject to stochastic noise issues. In this study, the void effect and Doppler constant have been enumerated for the ESFR core by Serpent2 and ERANOS2 codes, preserving a six-batch operation scheme. The Serpent code was coupled to the Python script BBP to simulate batch-wise operation in a radially infinite inner core configuration; the ERANOS code was applied to the whole core geometry and the batch-wise operation was simulated by the EQL3D routine. Sodium void effect and Doppler constant spatial maps with different levels of refinement were produced, as well as the time evolution of the integral coefficients during the transition from initial cycle to equilibrium cycle. Both codes indicate deterioration of these coefficients during the transition. The equilibrium cycle performance of the inner core zone from the ERANOS calculation was compared with Serpent results and they showed reasonable agreement. For very fine mapping, the Monte Carlo method employed was computationally very demanding and the enumerated effect was lower than the stochastic noise. In general, the Serpent model practically excludes modeling assumptions and produces reliable results for reasonably sized maps, which can be combined if needed with the high spatial resolution results obtained by ERANOS simulations.

Void Formation: Does the Void-in-Cloud Process Matter?

We investigate the basic properties of voids from high resolution, cosmological N-body simulations of Λ–dominated cold dark matter (ΛCDM) models, in order to compare with the analytical model of Sheth and van de Weygaert (SvdW) for void statistics. For the subsample of five dark matter simulations in the ΛCDM cosmology with box sizes ranging from 1000h−1Mpc to 8 h−1Mpc, we find that the standard void–in–cloud effect is too simplified to explain several properties of identified small voids in simulations. (i) The number density of voids is found to be larger than the prediction of the analytical model up to 2 orders of magnitude below 1h−1Mpc scales. The Press-Schechter model with the linear critical threshold of void δv = −2.71, or a naive power law, is found to provide an excellent agreement with the void size function, suggesting that the void-in-cloud effect does not suppress as much voids as predicted by the SvdW model. (ii) We then measured the density and velocity profiles of small voids, and find that they are mostly partially collapsing underdensities, instead of being completely crushed in the standard void–in–cloud scenario. (iii) Finally, we measure the void distributions in four different tidal environments, and find that the void–in-void effect alone can explain the correlation between distribution and environments, whereas the void–in–cloud effect is only weakly influencing the abundance of voids, even in filaments and clusters.

Influence of Symmetric and Asymmetric Voids on Mechanical Behaviors of Tunnel Linings: Model Tests and Numerical Simulations

The presence of symmetric and asymmetric voids directly affects the mechanical behaviors of tunnel linings and further induces tunnel diseases among influence factors. In this paper, 1:5-scale model tests were carried out to study the mechanical behaviors of reinforced concrete (RC) linings considering the voids located at the crown and at the spandrel. Based on the experimental results and concrete plastic damage (CDP) model, the effects of void (i.e., location and size), subgrade stiffness, and lining size on bearing capacity of RC lining were investigated using numerical simulation. The results of model test and parametric analysis showed that the existence of voids significantly affected the mechanical behavior of the lining during inelastic deformation period. The lining with a larger void size corresponded to low bearing capacity and larger deformation around the void, thus increasing the damage possibility of linings. The influence of voids on the bearing capacity of linings varied with the void location, load direction (especially under horizontal symmetrical loads), and subgrade stiffness. High soil stiffness corresponded to a great influence of the void size on the lining bearing capacity. In addition, the lining strength increased inconsistently with the increase of model size. On the basis of parameter sensitivity analysis, the Levenberg–Marquardt (L-M) optimization algorithm and Logistic model were used to establish the equation of lining bearing capacity loss rate considering the void effect.