European Sodium Fast Reactor Safety Measures Assessment and Research Tools was a Horizon-2020 European Union project started in 2017 and completed in 2022. A consortium of 19 European organizations has made a next step in enhancing the commercial-size Generation-IV ESFR design in terms of safety and economics. Starting from the legacy of previous programs, the consortium has selected, implemented in the design and assessed new safety measures for ESFR using validated methodologies. The paper overviews the design innovations, including: 1) New reactor vessel, featuring elimination of reactor dome and safety vessel, minimization of the reactor vessel-pit gap and insulation of the reactor pit with a metallic liner on it; 2) New low-void effect core, featuring: MOX fuel with the same Pu content in the whole core, six-batch scheme without re-shuffling, internal spent fuel storage, sodium plenum against power excursion in case of sodium boiling, passively activated Curie-point locks of safety rods and corium discharge tubes; 3) Three new decay heat removal systems: first one using secondary sodium as working fluid and atmospheric air as a final heat sink, second one based on atmospheric air circulation through steam generator casing and third one based on force convection of water and oil through the reactor pit.

MIKITYUK K.;  BODI Janos;  FRIDMAN Emil;  GIRARDI Enrico;  GRAH Aleksander;  GUIDEZ Joel;  KREPEL Jiri;  PONOMAREV Aleksander; 

2026-08-19

The Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers

JRC132533

https://www.icone30.org/,    https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC132533,