Toward a Mechanistic Source Term in Advanced Reactors: A Review of Past U.S. SFR Incidents, Experiments, and Analyses

摘要

In 2015, as part of a Regulatory Technology Development Plan (RTDP) effort for sodium-cooled fast reactors (SFRs), Argonne National Laboratory investigated the current state of knowledge of source term development for a metal-fueled, pool-type SFR. This paper provides a summary of past domestic metal-fueled SFR incidents and experiments and highlights information relevant to source term estimations that were gathered as part of the RTDP effort. The incidents described in this paper include fuel pin failures at the Sodium Reactor Experiment (SRE) facility in July of 1959, the Fermi Ⅰ meltdown that occurred in October of 1966, and the repeated melting of a fuel element within an experimental capsule at the Experimental Breeder Reactor Ⅱ (EBR-Ⅱ) from November 1967 to May 1968. The experiments described in this paper include the Run-Beyond-Cladding-Breach tests that were performed at EBR-Ⅱ in 1985 and a series of severe transient overpower tests conducted at the Transient Reactor Test Facility (TREAT) in the mid-1980s.