Combined Active/Passive Decay Heat Removal Approach for the 24 Mwt Gas-Cooled Fast Reactor

Decay heat removal at depressurized shutdown conditions has been regarded as one of the key areas where significant improvement in passive response was targeted for the GEN IV GFR over the GCFR designs of thirty years ago. It has been recognized that the poor heat transfer characteristics of gas coolant at lower pressures needed to be accommodated in the GEN IV design. The design envelope has therefore been extended to include a station blackout sequence simultaneous with a small break/leak. After an exploratory phase of scoping analysis in this project, together with CEA of France, it was decided that natural convection would be selected as the passive decay heat removal approach of preference. Furthermore, a double vessel/containment option, similar to the double vessel/guard vessel approach of the SFR, was selected as the means of design implementation to reduce the PRA risks of the depressurization accident. However additional calculations in conjunction with CEA showed that there was an economic penalty in terms of decay heat removal system heat exchanger size, elevation heights for thermal centers, and most of all in guard containment back pressure for complete reliance on natural convection only. The back pressure ranges complicated the design requirements for the guard containment. Recognizing that the definition of a loss-of-coolant-accident in the GFR is a misnomer, since gas coolant will always be present, and the availability of some driven blower would reduce fuel temperature transients significantly; it was decided instead to aim for a hybrid active/passive combination approach to the selected BDBA. Complete natural convection only would still be relied on for decay heat removal but only after the first twenty four hours after the initiation of the accident. During the first twenty four hour period an actively powered blower would be relied on to provide the emergency decay power removal. However the power requirements of the active blower/circulators would be kept low by maintaining a pressurized system coolant back pressure of {approx}7-8 bars through the design of the guard containment for such a design pressure. This approach is termed the medium pressure approach by both CEA and the US. Such a containment design pressure is in the range of the LWR experience, both PWRs and BWRs. Both metal containments and concrete guard containments are possible in this pressure range. This approach is then a time-at-risk approach as the power requirements should be low enough that battery/fuel cell banks without diesel generator start-up failure rate issues should be capable of providing the necessary power. Compressed gas sources are another possibility. A companion PRA study is being conducted to survey the reliability of such systems