Document: NRC Regulatory Guide
Document ID: 9c99a4b7-8619-41f0-b716-262bfdb03941
Document Type: regulatory_guide
Title: Developing Principal Design Criteria for Non-Light Water Reactors + HISTORY - HISTORY 02/2017 – DG-1330 , Proposed Revision 0
Source: NRC Regulatory Guide Division 1
Source URL: https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML1630/ML16301A307.pdf
Revision Date: 2023-06
Chapter: 
Section ID: RG-1.232
CFR Part: 
CFR Title: 

Content:
CPB by PRISM) per NUREG-1368 (page 3-38). 16 Containment design. A reactor containment consisting of a high-strength, low- leakage, pressure-retaining structure surrounding the reactor and its primary cooling system shall be provided to control the release of radioactivity to the environment and to ensure that the reactor containment design conditions important to safety are not exceeded for as long as postulated accident conditions require. The containment leakage shall be restricted to be less than that needed to meet the acceptable onsite and offsite dose consequence limits, as specified in 10 CFR 50.34 for postulated accidents. The Commission approved the staff’s recommendation to restrict the leakage of the containment to be less than that needed to meet the acceptable onsite and offsite dose consequence limits in SECY-93-092 (Ref. 7). Therefore, the Commission agreed that the containment leakage for advanced reactors, similar to and including PRISM, NUREG-1368 (Ref. 4) should not be required to meet the “essentially leaktight” statement in GDC 16. Furthermore, all past, current, and planned SFR designs use a high- strength, low-leakage, pressure-retaining containment concept, which aims to provide a barrier to contain the fission products and other substances and to control the release of radioactivity to the environment. Reactions of sodium with air or water, sodium fires, and hypothetical reactivity accidents caused by sodium voiding or boiling could release significant energy inside the reactor containment structure. Therefore, a high-strength, low-leakage, pressure-retaining structure surrounding the reactor and its primary cooling system is required. Note that a design could have a low design pressure for the containment. Several technical reports and presentations support the need for a pressure-retaining structure surrounding SFRs. The report, “Experimental Facilities for Sodium Fast Reactor Safety Studies, Task Group on Advanced Reactors