Out Of Pile Experiment And Optimization For Passive Shutdown System Based On Curie Point Alloy Of The Fast Reactor

In facing the global challenge of economic crisis, climate change anomalies and serious resources shortage, new energy and low-carbon economy gained worldwide attention. Nuclear power is the large-scale clean energy alternative to fossil fuel, which is the only world-recognized, a new hot spot of international energy investment by its rich resources, low environmental pollution. The development of fast reactor becomes a conspicuous, to enhance the competitiveness of nuclear power in clean energy, by improving the utilization of uranium resources and solving the growing spent fuel.Security is the lifeline of fast reactor development, even nuclear power development. To further enhance the safety of CEFR (China experimental fast reactor), especially its active safety performance, the preliminary design of PASS (passive actuated shutdown system), based on Curie point alloy, is optimized. In order to test the performance of PASS system by out of pile high temperature tests, out of pile high temperature system is designed and commission processing, by using stainless steel, which is weak magnetic, to simulate the temperature of reactor. The new Sm2Co17 permanent magnet and soft magnets, which have different Curie point, are tested in out of pile high temperature tests. The experimental results repeated many times show that, PASS meets the design requirements well, when choosing appropriate material, that is stable under normal condition in the designed position, and falling in abnormal condition, which could shutdown the reactor safely.The results also showed that the sensitivity of PASS system is low. In order to improve the sensitivity, several different structures of components are designed. The finite element software ANSYS is used to calculate the corresponding response time, by simulating an abnormal temperature rise process. According to the results, under the same condition, the design of pentagonal has the highest sensitivity. The final shape will be determined combing with subsequent experiments.