Fourth Joint IAEA-GIF Technical Meeting/Workshop on Safety of Sodium-Cooled Fast Reactors

One of the key areas in both the Generation IV International Forum (GIF) and the IAEA programmes on innovative nuclear systems is the harmonization of safety approach, safety requirements and safety design criteria for the GEN-IV Sodium-cooled Fast Reactors (SDF-SFR). This topic has gained an increased importance in the aftermath of the accident that occurred in 2011 at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant.

In this framework, a series of joint IAEA-GIF Workshops on safety of Sodium-cooled Fast Reactors (SFR) has been held since 2010. The third joint IAEA-GIF Workshop on “Safety Design Criteria for Sodium-Cooled Fast Reactors” , held in 2013, focused on the development of the SDC-SFR, initiated by the GIF Policy Group (PG) in 2011. The GIF PG in July 2013 decided to invite the Regulators from GIF Member States and some International Organizations (IAEA, OECD-NEA, MDEP) to review the Phase 1 Report of the SDC-SFR, and to proceed with a Phase 2 work intended to quantify the design criteria as well as develop detailed guidelines to implement the general criteria. Meanwhile, GIF and the IAEA have agreed to invite design organizations of innovative SFRs currently under development, with the aim to present engineering solutions able to meet the SDC-SFR.

The main purpose of the 4th Joint IAEA-GIF Technical Meeting/Workshop is to present and discuss:

• the status of the SD-SFR Phase 1 Report review by national Regulators and International Organizations;
• the implementation of current SDC-SFR by the designers of innovative SFRs concepts;
• the status of SFR-SDC Phase 2 development; and
• specific safety design criteria e.g. practical elimination of accident situations, design extension conditions, sodium void reactivity effect.

Presentations

All presentations are available in the IAEA INIS Database

(reportnumber:"INIS-XA--18K5269")