Overview on Lead-Cooled Fast Reactor Design and Related Technologies Development in ENEA

Abstract

The next generation of nuclear energy systems, also known as Generation IV reactors, are being developed to meet the highest targets of safety and reliability, sustainability, economics, proliferation resistance, and physical protection, with improved performances compared with the currently licensed plants or those presently being built. Among the proposed technologies, lead-cooled fast reactors (LFRs) have been identified by nuclear industries in both Western and developing countries as being among the optimal Generation IV candidates. Since 2000, ENEA, the Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy, and Sustainable Economic Development is supporting the core design, safety assessment, and technological development of innovative nuclear systems cooled by heavy liquid metals (HLM) and, most recently, fully oriented on LFRs. ENEA is developing world-recognized skills in fast spectrum core design and is one of the largest European fleets of experimental facilities aiming at investigating HLM thermal-hydraulics, coolant chemistry control, corrosion behavior for structural materials, and material properties in the HLM environment, as well as at developing corrosion-protective coatings, components, instrumentation, and innovative systems, supported by experiments and numerical tools. Efforts are also dedicated to develop and validate numerical tools for specific application to HLM systems, ranging from neutronics codes, system and core thermal-hydraulic codes, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and fuel pin performance codes, including their coupling. The present work aims at highlighting the capabilities and competencies developed by ENEA so far in the framework of liquid metal technologies for Generation IV LFRs. In particular, an overview on the ongoing R&D experimental program will be depicted considering the current fleet of facilities, namely: CIRCE, NACIE-UP, LIFUS5, LECOR, BID-1, HELENA, RACHEL, and Mechanical Labs. An overview on the numerical activities performed so far and those presently ongoing is also reported. Finally, an overview of the ENEA contribution to the ALFRED Project in the frame of the FALCON international consortium is reported, mainly addressing the ongoing activity in terms of core design, technology development, and auxiliary systems design.