Small LBE-Cooled Fast Reactor for Expanding Market

A long-life safe simple small portable proliferation-resistant reactor is expected to solve many problems associating future energy and globally environmental problems. From discussions on mainly neutronics and safety points it has been shown that the heavy liquid metal cooled fast reactor is the best candidate to satisfy the above requirements. A lead-bismuth-eutectic (LBE) cooled fast reactor LSPR (LBE-Cooled Long-Life Safe Simple Small Portable Proliferation-Resistant Reactor) has been designed and continues to be improved. In the present paper a recent version of LSPR is presented. The total power of the present design is 150 MWt (53MWe). During whole reactor life of 12 years the excess reactivity required for burnup is very low, and negative coolant dilatation coefficient is confirmed. This characteristic together with some other characteristics makes unprotected loss of flow (ULOF) accident inherently safe. It can survive even simultaneous rod run-out transient over power (UTOP), ULOF and unprotected loss of heat sink (ULOHS) accident without the help of an operator or active device.