SSTAR: The US lead-cooled fast reactor (LFR)

Abstract

ABSTRACT. It is widely recognized that the developing world is the next area for major energy demand growth, including demand for new and advanced nuclear energy systems. With limited existing industrial and grid infrastructures, there will be an important need for future nuclear energy systems that can provide small or moderate increments of electric power (10-700 MWe) on small or immature grids in developing nations. Most recently, the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP) has identified, as one of its key objectives, the development and demonstration of concepts for small and medium sized reactors (SMRs) that can be globally deployed while assuring a high level of proliferation resistance. Lead-cooled systems offer several key advantages in meeting these goals. The small lead-cooled fast reactor concept known as the Small Secure Transportable Autonomous Reactor (SSTAR) reactor has been under ongoing development under the U.S. Generation IV Nuclear Energy Systems Initiative. It a system designed to provide energy security to developing nations while incorporating features to achieve nonproliferation aims, anticipating GNEP objectives. This paper presents the motivation for development of internationally deployable nuclear energy systems as well as a summary of one such system, SSTAR, which is the U.S. Generation IV Lead-cooled Fast Reactor system. INTRODUCTION.It is widely known that the developing world is the next area for major energy demand growth. This is the part of the world where population growth is high and, furthermore, the gap between the current levels of energy availability and the levels needed to sustain economic growth is also great. There is a diversity of different scenarios for supplky of expanded energy resources ranging from large and highlyt concentrated population centers of countries like China and india to remote and isolated communities (which also may be quite large). In addition, in many cases, existing electric grid capacity is limited and not readily able to accept lthe large increments of generating capacity represented by current central station nuclear power plants. Finally, industrial infrastructures are frequently limited and not able to provide the support needed for large central station plant construction, maintenenace and operation.

On the Sustainability and Progress of Energy Neutral Mineral Processing

“…However, the project did not result in actually building and operating an HTGR. In the case of energy neutral mineral processing, though it may be realized, HTGRs could be the first choice over other emerging HTR technology [131][132][133], such as the compact high temperature reactor (CHTR) [134,135], fluoride salt-cooled, high-temperature reactor (FHR) [136][137][138][139], gas-cooled fast reactor (GFR) [140][141][142], lead-cooled fast reactor (LFR) [143][144][145], molten salt reactor (MSR) [146] and others that may deliver process heat at temperatures higher than or equal to 600 °C. Five countries: Great Britain, the U.S., Germany, Japan and China have experience with operating and thus licensing HTGRs.…”

Lead–Bismuth Eutectic (LBE): A Coolant Candidate for Gen. IV Advanced Nuclear Reactor Concepts

“…[3] Although there is no operating experience for LBE-cooled reactors outside of Russia, many modular reactor concepts have been studied such as HYPERION, [5] LSPR, [13] PBWFR, [14] SSTAR, [15] and ELSY. Po-210 is a strong alpha emitter with a half-life about 138 days.…”

Advanced passive design of small modular reactor cooled by heavy liquid metal natural circulation

“…An SMR has been recognized as an innovative product for niche markets where large-scale nuclear reactors are unstable for technical, economic, and safety limitations (Abderrahim et al, 2001;Adamovich et al, 2007;Chang et al, 2005;Choi et al, 2011a;Fetterman et al, 2011;Hwang et al, 2000;Kim et al, 2001;Peterson et al, 2008;Reyes and Lorenzini, 2010;Smith et al, 2008;Toshinsky et al, 2002;Ueda et al, 2005;Wade et al, 2002). The niche markets include a sparsely populated off-grid region, an off-grid industrial complex, a seawater desalination process, and a district heating system (Choi et al, 2011a;Kuznetsov, 2008).…”