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Published in Viorel Badescu, George Cristian Lazaroiu, Linda Barelli, POWER ENGINEERING Advances and Challenges, 2018
The Advanced Sodium Technical Reactor for Industrial Demonstration (ASTRID) is a reactor proposed as the successor of the Phénix reactor in its role as a French-built SFR within the international Gen IV reactor program. ASTRID is a pool-type sodium-cooled fast reactor with a nominal power of 600 MWe, conceived as a technological (not commercial) reactor for demonstration of the relevancy and performance of innovations in the field of safety and operation. The innovations include (Aoto et al. 2014) a core with an overall negative sodium void effect, specific features to prevent and mitigate severe accidents (core catcher, combination of proved Decay Heat Removal systems and Vessel Natural Air draft cooling), a power conversion system that drastically decreases the sodium-water reaction risk (e.g., innovative sodium leak detection systems), and improvements in the in-service inspection and repair. Coupled with a pilot reprocessing facility, ASTRID has also the objective to test the industrial feasibility of the multi-recycling of plutonium, and to demonstrate the possibility of industrial transmutation of americium.10 Two concepts will be explored: the transmutation in homogeneous mode, with up to few per cent of Am in the core, allowing the demonstration of break-even-breeding (the quantity of MA that is transmuted equals the quantity that is produced in the core), and transmutation in heterogeneous mode, with 10% to 20% of Am in peripheral blankets (Grouiller et al. 2013).
Liquid Metals as Heat Transfer Fluids for Science and Technology
Published in Alina Adriana Minea, Advances in New Heat Transfer Fluids, 2017
Alexandru Onea, Sara Perez-Martin, Wadim Jäger, Wolfgang Hering, Robert Stieglitz
The French ASTRID prototype is a pool-type reactor of 600 MWe cooled by sodium with an intermediate sodium circuit. As fuel an oxide fuel composed of a UO2–PuO2 mixture is considered. The reference design is composed of 3 primary pumps, 4 IHXs, 4 secondary circuits, and 5 decay heat removal circuits. The energy conversion system is still open where a Brayton cycle is under consideration.
Nuclear Fuel Recycling
Published in Kenneth D. Kok, Nuclear Engineering Handbook, 2016
Patricia Paviet, Michael F. Simpson
In May 2006, the EdF board approved construction of a new 1650 MWe Evolutionary Pressurized reactor (EPR) unit at Flamanville, Normandy, adjacent to two existing PWRs. Construction work began in December 2007. The reactor was originally expected to start commercial operation in 2013, but due to delays is now expected to start up in 2016. The reactor vessel has been delivered in October 2013 to the construction site. An advanced Sodium Technological Reactor for Industrial Demonstration (ASTRID) is being designed by French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) and its industrial partners (Bess et al., 2013) and it represents a technology platform that France would like to have available for use in around 2040. The goal is to build a reactor for demonstrating innovative design choices so that the fast neutron reactors (FNR) can meet the criteria for the fourth generation with: Enhanced recycling of nuclear materialRobust safety demonstration that gives ASTRID the same safety level as the EPRHigh level of availability and reliability for operatorsCompliance with the requirements for anti-proliferation measures
The Nuclear, Humanities, and Social Science Nexus: Challenges and Opportunities for Speaking Across the Disciplinary Divides
Published in Nuclear Technology, 2021
Tillement and Garcias observe that a close study of nuclear reactor design projects “from the inside” makes it possible to understand the causes of their successes and failures. Such knowledge may be particularly helpful at a time when nuclear energy is being seriously considered as a low-carbon source of energy in many countries and at a time when a large number of reactor design projects are in relatively early stages of development. In their paper, Tillement and Garcias study the development of ASTRID, a French Generation IV sodium-cooled fast reactor whose development began in 2010 and which was terminated in 2019. The authors studied the development of this reactor from 2015 to 2019 inductively through interviews with the reactor’s designers. Through their in-depth case study, the authors explore the causes of the project’s termination. In so doing, they draw on the concepts of scale and alignment from the literature on large infrastructures. They find that the failure of this particular reactor project, and its eventual suspension, can be attributed to three forms of scale misalignment—temporal, social, and physical—and more specifically to the increasing complexity and ambiguity faced by the reactor’s designers. ASTRID, as an example of a nuclear reactor design project pursued for a substantial period of time and ultimately suspended, does not represent an exception but rather the norm in the nuclear sector. Another recent notable example of a French reactor design whose development was ultimately terminated is the Flexblue small modular reactor (SMR). Across the Atlantic, in the United States, such examples abound. The most notable, though not the most recent, among them perhaps is the Next Generation Nuclear Plant project whose development was halted at the demonstration phase. More recent examples of reactor projects that have been suspended for various reasons after initial periods of sustained effort include the mPower reactor, the Westinghouse SMR, and the Transatomic molten salt reactor, to name a few.
ASTRID, Back to the Future: Bridging Scales in the Development of Nuclear Infrastructures
Published in Nuclear Technology, 2021
Stéphanie Tillement, Frédéric Garcias
It was decided in the preliminary phases of defining the main parameters of ASTRID that ASTRID would be a reactor capable of supplying 600 MW to the electrical network. This choice may appear insignificant but it not only encapsulates the hesitations around the purpose of ASTRID, but also its inclusion in the trajectory of sodium reactors. Indeed, 600 MW is a power that does not correspond to any preexisting standard of scale within the French nuclear industry. It is too small a size to correspond to a head of series, sometimes also called FOAK (first of all kind), intended to rapidly initiate an industrial deployment of the technology. By way of comparison, the Superphénix reactor had an installed capacity of 1240 MW (although it was rarely fully used in practice). Superphénix was thus a reactor designed to provide a quantity of electricity on a commercial scale. ASTRID could therefore be interpreted as a step backward in terms of the degree of maturity of sodium technology within the French industry. This certainly contributed to detaching ASTRID from the image of Superphénix II which, as has been shown, was a condition for its social acceptability so much so that the Superphénix experience raised doubts and criticism within French society. Superphénix crystallized and concentrated fears about the danger of nuclear power within public opinion to the point of being the founding act of the French antinuclear movement. Notwithstanding, the 600 MW did not correspond either to the category of reactors with an experimental vocation, such as the much more modest Phénix and Rapsodie reactors. Just as it was probably not in the interest of the CEA to build a machine that was too large not to follow in the footsteps of Superphénix, building a machine too small in size would have sent the signal of an industry still far from an industrial and commercial horizon. At the time of ASTRID’s launch in 2010, the main challenge was indeed to position France in the race for Gen IV reactors and to highlight the know-how inherited from French industrial history.